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Amnesty International is a globalist United Nations proxy organization which receives heavy funding from highly morally dubious figures such as George Soros, among others. Like all “human rights” groups, its principle goal is to serve as an extension of Western imperialism and warmongering under the guise of “human rights”, which is perhaps the most Orwellian term in the modern political lexicon. Nonetheless, Amnesty International has, of course, duped plenty of wannabe philanthropists into supporting it so that they may pat themselves on the back and feel like they’re being charitable. But, like all “human rights” groups, Amnesty International is characterized by selective outrage, and there is no better an example of this than their stance on freedom of speech.

Free speech is the right to say whatever you like about whatever you like, whenever you like, right? Wrong.

Wrong? Really? Because I was under the impression that freedom of speech was indeed the right to say whatever you like about whatever you like, whenever you like.

In postmodernist “human rights” discourse, however, “free speech” is a category of speech, with the “free” being an adjective. Only government-approved speech is “free” speech. Anything else is “hate speech” and/or “incitement”. Every “human rights” group strongly supports “hate speech” laws, and Amnesty International is certainly no exception.

Free speech and the right to freedom of expression applies to ideas of all kinds including those that may be deeply offensive. But it comes with responsibilities and we believe it can be legitimately restricted.

In other words, it’s only “free speech” if it’s “responsible”. What constitutes “responsible” speech is, of course, decided by the government.

Governments have an obligation to prohibit hate speech and incitement. And restrictions can also be justified if they protect specific public interest or the rights and reputations of others.

Well, after the release of the infamous Muhammed cartoons in Danish newspaper Jyllends-Posten, Amnesty International released the following statement:

However, the right to freedom of expression is not absolute — neither for the creators of material nor their critics. It carries responsibilities and it may, therefore, be subject to restrictions in the name of safeguarding the rights of others. In particular, any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence cannot be considered legitimate exercise of freedom of expression. Under international standards, such “hate speech” should be prohibited by law.

AI calls on the government officials and those responsible for law enforcement and the administration of justice to be guided by these human rights principles in their handling of the current situation.

In other words, publishing cartoons of Muhammed is “hate speech and incitement” according to Amnesty International, and the cartoonists responsible for such work should be legally punished. It is not “legitimate” (i.e. United Nations-approved) freedom of speech. This sort of outrage is nothing new. When Salman Rushdie’s controversial book The Satanic Verses was published and a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death was issued by the Ayatollah of Iran, “human rights experts” at the United Nations attacked France for not banning the book, calling Rushdie’s novel an “incitement to racial hatred”. By calling for the Danish Muhammed cartoons to be banned, Amnesty International is merely echoing the sentiments of the United Nations, which they are essentially an extension of.

Contrast this with Amnesty International’s reaction to the incarceration of Pussy Riot band members, who were arrested for “incitement to religious hatred” after staging a protest performance in a Catholic church. Amnesty International made “free Pussy Riot” their number one campaign, citing the arrest of the band members as a gross violation of “freedom of expression”. But here’s the thing: Pussy Riot’s members were arrested under the very same “hate speech” legislation that Amnesty International believes governments have an obligation to enforce.

What’s different between Pussy Riot’s protest and the Danish cartoons of Muhammed? I think you know the answer to that. The difference is that Pussy Riot’s members were attacking Catholicism (an acceptable target), whereas the Danish cartoons were attacking Islam (an unacceptable, protected target). If Pussy Riot were a far-right band that staged a protest performance inside of a mosque, would Amnesty International have campaigned for their release? Of course not. If anything, Amnesty International would have campaigned for their incarceration. After all, every branch of Amnesty International firmly supports “hate speech” laws, with Amnesty International Australia being a strong supporter of the country’s federal law making it illegal to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” minorities (Amnesty International Australia loudly complained when the Australian government announced its plans to slightly weaken that draconian law after popular columnist Andrew Bolt was convicted – those plans were later abandoned due to massive outcry from the Australian public and from “human rights” groups like Amnesty).

As I have stated before, true freedom of speech is an equalizer. If you can say something about one group, but not about another group, then people are not equal. If one group can say something, but not another group, then that’s not equality. And, if you’re not prepared to defend freedom of speech even for those whom you profoundly despise, then you do not believe in freedom of speech.

People who support censorship laws always manage to convince themselves that those laws will only be used to silence speech that they disapprove of. But that is never how it actually works out in reality. When you give the government the power to censor speech, it is 100% guaranteed that this power will eventually be used to silence you and/or something that you approve of. That is absolutely inevitable.

Ultimately, what constitutes “hate speech” and “incitement” is decided entirely by the government. “Human rights” groups are the biggest supporters of censorship legislation, but they are always outraged when they find that legislation being inevitably used to silence speech that they consider “legitimate”. They utterly fail to consider that giving the government the power to decide what kind of speech is “legitimate” will always result in that power being abused.

The “international standards” banning “hate speech” that Amnesty International refers to are provisions in UN documents that have their origins in the Soviet Union. Stalin saw “hate speech” legislation as a powerful tool that he could use in order to undermine freedom of speech on a global scale and to attack democracy, and he lobbied heavily for international bans on “hate speech”. Initially, every democratic country was highly opposed to having any kind of laws against “hate speech”, but the Soviets won the battle in the end and “hate speech” became part of “international human rights law”, which is why every “human rights” group and “human rights activist” now pushes “hate speech” laws worldwide.

As a result of Stalin’s efforts at the United Nations, most countries (with the notable exception of the United States) now have laws against “hate speech” and the “human rights” movement is now all about censorship of speech rather than freedom of speech. Right now, Islamic dictatorships are attempting to use “international human rights law” in order to pass a worldwide ban on blasphemy in a perfect example of how, once “hate speech” laws are in place, they inevitably expand and grow more restrictive over time. “Human rights” has not only become an extremely powerful weapon that dictatorships can use in order to erode liberty worldwide, but it has also become a mighty shield that dictatorships can use in order to justify their own excesses. Pakistan and Egypt, for example, prosecute blasphemy with the justification that “international human rights law” requires legal sanctions on “religious hatred”. “Human rights” groups across the world take their orders from the UN. Should the UN decide to pass an “international human rights law” against blasphemy – just like it did with “hate speech” – then “human rights” groups will begin demanding blasphemy laws and the prosecution of blasphemy will become an internationally-accepted “human rights standard”, just like “hate speech” laws have become due to Soviet lobbying.

Like all “human rights” groups, Amnesty International is a massively hypocritical and anti-free speech organization which nobody who genuinely cares for liberty and democracy should ever support. It is a sad reminder of how the Soviet Union subverted the concept of “human rights” to make its primary goal into expanding the powers of the government rather than limiting them. Most of all, Amnesty International is a perfect example of the absurd double standards that one will find among advocates of censorship legislation. When it’s speech that they approve of – such as attacks on the Catholic church – it’s “freedom of expression” and must be allowed. When it’s speech that they disapprove of – such as drawings of Muhammed – it’s “hate speech and incitement” and must be outlawed.

One of the core aspects of the international “human rights” movement is that any speech which opposes “human rights” must always be outlawed, whether it’s racism, homophobia, or “propaganda for war”. Like all tyrannical ideologies, the “human rights” ideology sincerely believes that it is 100% objectively good and thus must never be questioned or opposed in any way. With any luck, the “human rights” approach to freedom of speech will never find its way to the United States. But, if “human rights” groups like Amnesty International have their way, we may very well find cartoons of Muhammed banned on our own shores as “hate speech and incitement”.

Despite the deeply troubling results of the aforementioned poll, absolute freedom of speech remains a very widespread and uniquely American value in the US. Freedom of speech is one of the few things that still unites Americans of all political stripes. In America, not even hardcore leftists would support any kind of laws against “racial vilification” or “incitement to hatred”, and they certainly wouldn’t support any laws against “offending” or “insulting” people. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) – which is generally considered to be the bastion of the American left – regularly defends the likes of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, cross-burners, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Westboro Baptist Church on free speech grounds. Freedom of speech is one of the biggest American values there is, and Americans are willing to staunchly defend freedom of speech even for people that they profoundly despise. On freedom of speech grounds, Americans who strongly believe in anti-racism, gay rights, and feminism will defend the right to advocate violence against blacks, gays, and women. Black Americans will defend the right of KKK members to burn crosses and call for the lynching of blacks. Gay Americans will defend the right of Westboro Baptist Church members to brandish “FAGS DIE, GOD LAUGHS” signs at the funerals of AIDS victims and the right of fundamentalist preachers to demand the execution of gays. American feminists will defend the right to advocate rape and the right to produce rape porn. Jewish Americans will defend the right of neo-Nazis to call them kikes and the right to say that all Jews should be rounded up and gassed. In a particularly famous case, Jewish Holocaust survivor Aryeh Neier of the ACLU even defended the right of neo-Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois (a heavily Jewish town filled with many Holocaust survivors), using many of the same arguments that the ACLU had used when they had defended the free speech rights of the civil rights marchers of the 1960s. The law is a blunt instrument. If the law could be used to stop the Nazis from marching in Skokie, then it could also be used to stop civil rights marches – hence why it was so important for the left-wing and deeply anti-racist ACLU to defend the free speech rights of both anti-racists and vicious racists. From the ACLU themselves: “It is easy to defend freedom of speech when the message is something many people find at least reasonable. But the defense of freedom of speech is most critical when the message is one most people find repulsive. That was true when the Nazis marched in Skokie. It remains true today.” When we defend the right to advocate killing gays or the right to hold “GOD HATES JEWS” signs outside of Rosh Hashanah services, it’s certainly not because we agree with the message being conveyed. It’s simply because we understand the importance of a truly principled defense of freedom of speech, even for speech that we profoundly despise. That sort of deeply principled commitment to freedom of speech is absolutely unheard of in Australia, and the general Australian public wouldn’t possibly be able to comprehend it on any level.

In the US, the belief that the government should never have the power to prosecute people for expressing an opinion is something that almost everyone agrees with, regardless of their political stance. In Australia, however, it is the exact opposite. Almost all Australians – regardless of their political stance – firmly believe that any opinions they disapprove of should be outlawed by the government. In the hyper-sensitive, ultra-politically correct, and severely white guilt-stricken climate that is modern-day Australia, it is a universally accepted, objective truth that people have a basic human right to not be offended or insulted – in fact, polls have repeatedly found that almost all Australians (at least 88%) support laws against “offending” or “insulting” people, and particularly laws against “offending” or “insulting” minorities. The mantra that “hate speech is not free speech” is something that almost every single person in Australia agrees with – even the most hardcore “free speech absolutists” and “small-government libertarians” in the country still firmly believe that “hate speech” (or “vilification“, as it’s often called there) should be illegal, and any proposal to even marginally soften the scope of “hate speech” legislation would be met with universal scorn and condemnation from all corners of Australian society. Just ask Australia’s Attorney-General George Brandis, who became Australia’s public enemy #1 when he proposed just slightly weakening the country’s federal “hate speech” law – section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act – which makes it illegal to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” on the basis of “race, colour or national or ethnic origin” (each Australian state also has its own “hate speech” laws, which can be even stricter).

In response to popular right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt being convicted of “racial vilification” for questioning the motives of white people who claim “aboriginal” ancestry in some of his columns (Bolt’s conviction was cheered across the country as “a major victory for human rights”), Brandis wanted to slightly amend the law to replace the words “offend”, “insult”, and “humiliate” with the word “vilify” (which he defined as “to incite hatred”), and to add an exemption for people who were “participating in the public discussion of any political, social, cultural, religious, artistic, academic or scientific matter.” Brandis claimed that 18C in its current form failed to adequately “protect” against racism and “racial vilification”, thus why he wanted to add the word “vilify” to it. He repeatedly assured the public that he wasn’t going to let racists speak freely and he also assured them that he wouldn’t allow Holocaust denial to become legal (there was much fear that the proposed changes would “allow Holocaust denial”). He also repeatedly assured people that comments which were not made as part of a constructive “public discussion” (such as, for example, racist comments made on the Internet or racist chants at sports stadiums) would not be allowed and would continue to be unlawful. Brandis made it very clear that it he only intended to protect “legitimate” (in other words, government-approved) freedom of speech. Brandis had absolutely no intentions of legalizing “racial vilification”; he simply wanted to slightly tweak the “racial vilification” laws so that people like Andrew Bolt (who, by the way, is a friend of the current Australian government) would not be convicted of “racial vilification” again in the future. He wanted to slightly amend the federal “hate speech” laws, not to remove them altogether (completely removing “hate speech” laws would be absolutely unthinkable in Australia). In Brandis’s words: “I have always said that freedom of speech and the need to protect people from racial vilification are not inconsistent objectives. Laws which are designed to prohibit racial vilification should not be used as a vehicle to attack legitimate freedoms of speech.” To “vilify” or “incite hatred”, Brandis said, “is not to engage in freedom of speech. Inciting hatred or causing fear are not an aspect of intellectual freedom, or freedom of speech. They are not an expression of freedom at all.”

But it was all to no avail. In Australia, proposing that “only” “incitement to hatred” should be illegal – rather than just “offending” or “insulting” people – is considered to be extremely radical, far-right, ultra-libertarian, and “free speech absolutist”. Brandis’s “sweeping changes to race-hate laws” were met with universal condemnation and outrage. Many people complained of how Brandis’s definition of “racial vilification” “only” included “to incite hatred”, and how his definition of “intimidation” “only” included “to cause fear of physical harm”. It was also widely complained-about that Brandis’s exemption clause for “public discussions” – which, the Australian public was assured, “would not excuse any offensive opinions unless a court found they were made as part of a relevant public debate” – was “overly broad” and many feared that it would “allow” racism if the racism was part of a “public discussion”. Even though Brandis’s proposal didn’t go anywhere near the level of freedom of speech found in the US, removing provisions against “offending”, “insulting”, and “humiliating” people – and adding an exemption clause for “public discussions” – was widely regarded as being highly extreme and totally reckless, even by “libertarians”. The reaction that George Brandis got when he proposed slightly weakening Australia’s federal “hate speech” law was very similar to the reaction that an American politician would get if they proposed making it legal to lynch blacks. The “human rights” lobby was, of course, the most outraged by Brandis’s proposal, but the outrage was universal across all corners of Australian society. Brandis’s proposal still heavily limited freedom of speech and it would be considered completely unconstitutional in the US, but his proposal was unanimously seen by the Australian public as recklessly removing “all limitations” on freedom of speech at the expense of “vulnerable minorities” (who are apparently so delicate, helpless, and fragile that they desperately need powerful white people protecting their feelings at all times). George Brandis was universally loathed and mocked as a champion of racist hatred and bigotry. “Brandis says that repealing these laws is in the interests of freedom of speech, what he really means is freedom to engage in public hate speech”, said Mark Dreyfus, one of Australia’s most prominent “free speech activists”. Dreyfus would later go on to say: “They still don’t get it. They still have an undergraduate understanding of political philosophy and of human rights. The Abbott Government still doesn’t understand, as any human rights lawyer could explain, that the human right to free speech has always been subject to the human right to be free from racial discrimination.”

If someone in America ever proposed that it should be illegal to “racially vilify” or “intimidate” people unless one was participating in a “public discussion”, it would be considered to be an absolutely outrageous assault on freedom of speech (even by the hard left) and it would be instantly declared to be highly unconstitutional. But, in Australia, George Brandis’s proposal was considered to be an absolutely outrageous assault on the sacred human right to not be offended or insulted. Cartoonists depicted Brandis as a primitive evolutionary throwback and bigoted troglodyte trying to bring racism back to Australia. Newspapers, magazines, and websites pumped out endless columns about how slightly weakening federal “hate speech” laws was an evil and reckless move that would not only be the end of multiculturalism in Australia, violate “international human rights law”, “harm the cause of freedom”, and greatly damage Australia’s international image, but would also directly lead to race riots and even outright genocide (some people cited ethnic massacres in South Sudan as a “warning” of what would inevitably happen if Australia slightly watered down its federal “hate speech” laws). Countless articles were published with titles like “Why bigotry is not OK, Mr Brandis” and “Race act changes are what you get when you champion bigotry”. People held protests against the proposed changes. Politicians, lawyers, barristers, “human rights activists”, artists, authors, athletes, lobbyists, celebrities, pundits, journalists, columnists, the media, and the public at large were absolutely outraged that someone would even dare to suggest slightly watering down federal “hate speech” regulations. Political figures (including many politicians from Brandis’s own party) promised that they would reverse any changes made to the “hate speech” laws. Brandis’s proposals were widely seen as signaling the return of the White Australia policy. Even many “libertarians” and “free speech activists” were utterly disgusted by proposals to slightly water down “hate speech” legislation, stressing that freedom of speech must be “balanced” against “freedom from racial vilification” and that “bigotry and hate speech have no place in Australia”.

“Freedom of speech does not give you the right to hurt people”, they would say in unison. Brandis was accused of not only being a racist bigot, but also of trying to destroy Australia’s diversity and multiculturalism altogether. Eventually and inevitably, the government backed down and promised not to change the laws. But, to this day, the people who proposed the changes are still repeatedly derided as “racists” and “bigots” for daring to propose that perhaps government limitations on “bigoted” speech should be watered down just a bit. If an Australian politician ever voiced their support for watering down 18C, they would (and still do) find themselves bombarded with emails, Tweets, and phone calls of this sort:

George Brandis (and every other person who proposed watering down 18C) is routinely condemned to this very day for “attacking the basic human rights of vulnerable minorities” by attempting to marginally soften the scope of federal “hate speech” legislation. The Australian government’s proposal to slightly weaken laws against “offending” or “insulting” minorities was quite possibly one of the most unpopular policies ever proposed by an Australian government, and it will undoubtedly hurt current Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s chances of being re-elected. One should keep in mind that even “far-right nationalists” and “small-government libertarians” in Australia still firmly support “hate speech” laws – in fact, even outright RACISTS in Australia still tend to support “hate speech” laws – so any proposal to water down such laws in Australia would be roughly equivalent to an American politician proposing that the US should become a territory of Russia, or that child abuse should become legal.

The nanny state mindset in Australia is very, very extreme. This video of free speech advocate Brendan O’Neill being shouted down by rabid censorship activists on the Australian talk show Q&A is another perfect example of the Australian nanny-state mindset in action. After far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik’s massacre in Norway, Australians and others were widely calling for all criticism of Islam to be banned and for right-wing pundits like Mark Steyn and Pamela Geller to be held accountable for “inciting” Breivik to slaughter 77 people (even though Breivik was obviously a deranged, violent lunatic who would have killed people anyways, regardless of any “hate speech” that he may have encountered). The logic here is classic Marxist logic: people are not responsible for their own actions and personal responsibility does not exist. In the world of socialists like these, people do not have any free will whatsoever; people are merely mindless, glassy-eyed automatons who automatically act on any speech that they hear without so much as even thinking about it. If anti-Islam commentators made Breivik kill people, then it could just as easily be argued that provocative clothing makes rapists rape people – but, then again, I certainly wouldn’t expect these people to apply their moronic principles consistently.

Here, Brendan O’Neill argues with people who not only want the likes of Mark Steyn to be banned, but who also want all media outlets to be regulated. Yes, that’s right. In Australia, not only have numerous politicians voiced their desire for absolute government press control, but so have most “journalists”. In fact, Australian “journalists” lead the charge for total state control of the press and, during the Gillard years, they almost got what they wanted with the Finkelstein Inquiry, which would have set up a system of total government media licensing/press regulation and was intended to shut down all right-leaning press outlets (the left in Australia universally supported this and never considered that it could ever be used against them by a future right-wing government). These exact same “journalists” are, of course, now upset that Australia is stepping up its government regulation of journalism by, for example, banning journalists from reporting on WikiLeaks cases – much like Australian “journalist” Mike Carlton was sued under the very same “hate speech” laws that he had previously voiced his support for and many of the Australians who campaigned to have camper car company Wicked Campers banned for their “offensive” and “sexist” slogans are now outraged over a man in Brisbane being arrested for wearing an “I’m with stupid” T-shirt. As always, people who advocate for censorship never expect for it to be used against them and they are utterly outraged when it is.

In the short clip above, you can see Brendan’s opponents using petty emotional arguments and logical fallacies to cheer for censorship, while Brendan hardly has a chance to even argue his points amid the rabid cries of “your rights end where my feelings begin” and “won’t somebody please think of the children!?”. Socialist politician Tanya Plibersek tells Brendan: “I cannot understand that you think that it is fine for people to go out and say we should kill all Muslims or we should do this or do that and that that has no real effect on the world.” Aside from the fact that Brendan never even mentioned people saying “we should kill all Muslims” (the likes of Mark Steyn and Pamela Geller have certainly never said anything like that), this is a great example of the Australian mindset, which I discussed in one of my previous articles. In Australia, the concept of defending freedom of speech for people that you profoundly disapprove of simply does not exist at all. Neither does the idea that someone can disapprove of something without wanting to outlaw it. In Australia, if you disapprove of something, then it’s automatically assumed that you’d also want to outlaw that thing. The Australian public is absolutely baffled at the idea that someone could separate their personal convictions from the law. They simply cannot distinguish what is morally acceptable from what is legal. To them, if something is morally unacceptable, then it must therefore also be illegal. Absolutely no distinction is made between unacceptable behavior and illegal behavior; the two are always one and the same. In addition, Tanya Plibersek – of course – never even considers the idea that censorship in the name of “protecting health and morals” could ever be used to silence people that she agrees with. After all, “protecting public health and morals” was the justification for everything from blasphemy laws to the banning of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and it’s also the justification that far-right politicians often use in their attempts to ban the Quran. But, despite history repeatedly showing otherwise, people like Tanya firmly believe that their views will always be the views held by those with the power to censor and thus government censorship will never be used against them. It’s an extremely naive and childish view based on petty emotions and feelings and a complete lack of anything even vaguely resembling logic or reason.

Indeed, this is exactly what I have experienced whenever I have attempted to debate freedom of speech with Australians. Time and time again, I have presented rational, logical arguments as to why “hate speech” laws are a bad idea. And, time and time again, I have been screamed at, insulted, threatened, and blocked. The responses that I get from Aussies are usually barely coherent (if at all), filled with spelling and grammar errors, often typed out in ALL CAPS, and frequently laced with profanity. One person even called me a “chink” without the slightest hint of irony, even though they had absolutely no way of knowing what my race was. I was called a Nazi, a troll, a racist, a bigot, a moron, and an “apologist for racist hate speech”, among many other things. I was told numerous times that bigotry is unacceptable, as if opposing the criminalization of speech automatically means that you think bigotry is perfectly fine. I was told over and over again that “hate speech is not free speech” and that “freedom of speech comes with responsibility”, with none of the Australians ever able to actually define what “hate speech” is or what “responsible” speech constitutes (let alone who gets to decide those things). At no point did any Australian ever attempt to refute me with logic or reason; emotion and feelings were the only things that they understood.

Generally speaking, the Australian public has a complete inability to differentiate between something that should not be encouraged and something that should be illegal, without any consideration whatsoever of who sets the standards for what can and cannot be said. It’s unbelievably narcissistic and bordering on solipsistic. I have eventually come to accept the fact that attempting to explain the concept of freedom of speech to the Australian public at large is simply a lost cause. During the 18C controversy, some Australians even – without the slightest hint of irony – quoted from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four to justify speech and thought regulations: “If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate.” In other words, George Orwell would apparently approve of outlawing certain thoughts because certain thoughts are bad.

Speaking of people saying “we should kill all Muslims”, the hashtag #KillAllMuslims actually did trend on Twitter recently. It was started by a troll, and nearly every single post (at least 99% of the posts) made under the hashtag consisted of people expressing outrage over the fact that the hashtag was trending in the first place. Nobody was “incited” by the hashtag to kill any Muslims, and the hashtag most definitely wasn’t taken seriously by anyone. If anything, seeing that kind of “hate speech” only made people more sympathetic towards Muslims and more defensive of Muslims, and it certainly didn’t help the anti-Islam movement in any way (quite the opposite, in fact). A similar thing happened when former Breitbart contributor Pat Dollard sent out a Tweet calling on Americans to “start slaughtering Muslims in the streets, all of them”. Almost every single response to Dollard expressed outrage at his over-the-top genocidal sentiment, and he undoubtedly did a great deal of damage to the anti-Islam movement by making them look like a bunch of rabid, violent extremists and giving the pro-Islam movement a heavy amount of ammo to use against the anti-Islam movement. The more extreme, vile, and outrageous the “hate speech” is, the more it drives people away and unites people against bigotry. Just ask Fred Phelps and his virulently homophobic Westboro Baptist Church, who have probably done more to advance the cause of gay rights and to unite people against homophobia than any other group in America ever has. Not only Westboro, but the ugly excesses of certain figures on the homophobic Christian right have actually helped to advance gay rights simply because they make homophobia seem completely unreasonable. For example, every single time a Christian pastor calls for homosexuals to be executed, they do a great deal of damage to the anti-gay movement. If you really want to make people hate bigots, then all you actually need to do is to encourage those bigots to be as openly loud, vile, extreme, annoying, offensive, abrasive, obnoxious, and flat-out unreasonable in public as possible. That will make people hate bigots. On the other hand, forcing bigots to remain quiet and reasonable and thus giving them a “forbidden fruit” and “persecuted martyr” allure most certainly won’t make people hate bigots; if anything, it will only make the bigots seem much more attractive and sympathetic.

The American approach to freedom of speech is absolutely unheard of in Australia, however. In fact, the Australian state of Victoria has ruled that even “wholly true and completely balanced” statements can be outlawed as “racial or religious vilification” if they are likely to paint minorities in a negative light and/or create “hatred” (in this particular case, two Christian pastors were charged with “religious vilification” for talking about Islamic terrorism, even though they openly stated that most Muslims weren’t terrorists and that Christians should treat Muslims with love. The Human Rights Commission/Equal Opportunity Commission had deliberately sent undercover Muslims to the Christian sermon as part of a sting operation in order to get a complaint about “religious vilification”). Indeed, truthfulness is absolutely no defense whatsoever in court when it comes to Australia’s various “vilification” laws, including 18C – it genuinely doesn’t matter whether the “vilification” was factually correct or not. To almost all Americans, this sounds positively Orwellian. But most people in Australia would have absolutely no problem with it.

In Australia, if you support someone’s right to say something, then you automatically agree with what they’re saying. Allowing racists to speak freely IS racism. If you believe that racists should be allowed to speak freely, then you are automatically a racist. If you don’t think that The Daily Mail should be banned, then you therefore automatically support murdering all Muslims (most people in Australia make absolutely no distinction whatsoever between offensive speech and violent action, and they often consider offensive speech to be worse than physical violence). If you believe that it should be legal to “vilify” homosexuality, then you are a homophobe. If you believe that people should be legally allowed to tell jokes about rape, then you are a rapist (there is a large movement in Australia to outlaw anything that “perpetuates rape culture” or “sexism”, and anyone who disagrees with this movement will find themselves universally demonized as a misogynist rape supporter). Tim Wilson – Australia’s current Human Rights Commissioner – learned this lesson first-hand. When a camper car company called Wicked Campers started using deliberately vulgar and provocative slogans (e.g. “Virginity is curable!”) for attention and publicity, most Australians wanted the company to be prosecuted and shut down by the government for “sexism” and “inciting rape” (the Australian senate unanimously passed a motion condemning the camper car company and their “sexist” slogans). When Tim Wilson said that the government didn’t need to ban the camper car company and that people should instead use their freedom of speech to speak out against the company, he caused huge outrage, he was accused of supporting rape, he was universally condemned for his “male privilege”, and there were widespread calls for him to be sacked.

The Australian public simply cannot fathom the idea that someone could possibly disapprove of something without wanting it to be outlawed. There is absolutely nothing like the ACLU in Australia – in fact, even the “hardcore free speech absolutists” in Australia still support banning a wide range of speech, including “hate speech” (or “vilification”). It’s very common to see Australians cheer for “freedom of speech” and quote Voltaire, then immediately turn around and demand that people be prosecuted for “offensive” speech or “vilification” – and they genuinely don’t see anything even remotely ironic or contradictory about this. As previously mentioned, polls have repeatedly shown that almost all Australians believe that it should be against the law to “insult” or “offend” people – including Australian “libertarians” and “free speech activists”. In Australia, proposing that it should “only” be illegal to “incite hatred” (or “vilify”) is absolutely as “free speech fundamentalist” as you can possibly get, and it’s considered to be a very extreme position in the country.

If someone like Glenn Greenwald or Aryeh Neier were to make a speech in Australia regarding freedom of speech, they would be universally called Nazi racist terrorist far-right extremists who want to kill all minorities and the “human rights” lobby would probably campaign to have them deported. If a person in Australia ever suggested that there should be no “hate speech” or “vilification” or “incitement to hatred” laws whatsoever (which is something that absolutely nobody in Australia would ever suggest), they would be treated exactly the same way as a vicious neo-Nazi skinhead would be. They would lose their job, they would lose all of their friends, they would be a complete outcast, they would be relentlessly harassed, and they would probably be physically assaulted as well. Such is the Australian mindset.

The Australian attitude towards freedom of speech can perhaps best be summed up in this comment from Australian theology professor Neil Ormerod: “Free speech for racist bigots, free speech for climate denialists. Where will it end? Free speech for the tobacco industry to deny smoking causes cancer? There is a value in free speech to promote reasoned discussion and deliberation. And then there is obdurate and at times wilful [sic] ignorance. Smoking does cause cancer, there are no superior races and human-induced climate change is as certain as it is scientifically possible to demonstrate.” This very accurately and succinctly reflects the general attitude towards freedom of speech in Australia. Most people in Australia not only believe that racist comments should be against the law, but that so should anything that they personally disapprove of, whether it’s climate change denial, vaccine denial, radio shock jocks, pickup artists, “offensive” jokes, vulgar slogans on camper cars, violent video games, or anything else deemed “dangerous” to the masses. They also do not even entertain the vague possibility that these laws could ever be used against them. They always claim to strongly support “freedom of speech”, of course, but only for popular speech that they agree with. Australians are always outraged and always scream about “freedom of speech” when the Australian government outlaws popular speech – like when it bans WikiLeaks reports or outlaws protesting – but they loudly demand government censorship of “offensive” views and they genuinely do not consider it to be a form of censorship at all. They really and truly do not understand how, when you give the government the power to censor any speech, that power will inevitably be expanded and abused.

During the Julia Gillard administration, Australia nearly passed a law called the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill – endorsed by Australia’s federal government Australian Human Rights Commission and wholeheartedly supported by Australia’s countless “human rights” groups – which would have made it illegal to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” people on the basis of age, sex, race, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, immigrant status, marital/relationship status, political opinion, social origin, religion, nationality, medical history, family responsibilities, or industrial history – and the law stated that people would be declared guilty until proven innocent (yes, you read that correctly – and this is considered “centrist” in Australia). Under the legislation, the accused would not have an automatic right to legal representation, and the accused would be required to pay all of the costs of their defense, even if they were found to be innocent. The law also would have outlawed any expression of religious belief if someone were “offended” by it. This law (which had wide support and which the “freedom and civil liberties”-supporting Australian Greens claimed “didn’t go far enough”) was primarily intended to silence all criticism of the government – particularly from the Rupert Murdoch-owned media, which the Australian left has long desired to shut down (along with banning the Murdoch media, banning radio “shock jocks” is another one of the Australian left’s favorite crusades). Many of the people who supported this extremely Orwellian, draconian law were the very same people who demanded an Australian Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of speech. And no, they did not find anything even remotely hypocritical about that because, in postmodernist “human rights” discourse, freedom of speech only protects nice speech. The United States is, in fact, the only country in the world where the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech actually covers what “human rights activists” refer to as “hate speech”. In every other country – Australia included, obviously – it’s universally agreed-upon that “hate speech is not free speech”. But the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill took this to a whole new level.

Laws like the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill are proposed on the basis that the government will always use them to silence whoever the people proposing the law wants to be silenced (which, I should add, is never how it actually works out in reality). Did the people who proposed this law ever consider – even for a brief moment – how it may be used to silence their views by a future right-wing government? Did the left-wing “journalists” who cheered for this law because it would shut down all right-wing media outlets ever consider that a future right-wing government could easily use it to shut them down? No, because they did not consider that there would ever be a right-wing government in the future. Not only do they not think into the future, but they also believe that progressives will always be in power and thus passing extremely broad censorship legislation will always work out in the favor of progressives. Ultimately, censorship legislation is based on incredible hubris. It’s based on the assumption that the views of the people proposing the censorship legislation will never fall out of favor with those who hold the power to censor (i.e. those in the government). The Australian left has repeatedly said that it should always be illegal to “manipulate public opinion against the common good”, but they never even consider that right-wingers could ever possibly use that against them. They genuinely believe that their views are objectively good, so opposing views must therefore be outlawed. Never does the thought even cross their minds that someone else could have very different ideas of what constitutes “good”, and that those people could then outlaw left-wing beliefs as being “against the common good”. Just ask the LGBT activists in Russia, whose views are now outlawed because Russian President Vladimir Putin considers them to be “against the common good”. The powerful majority always decides what should be censored, and history has repeatedly shown us that the power to censor has always hurt minorities the most.

It is widely believed in Australia that freedom of speech is something which only serves “old white rich men”, who, it is said, already have way too much power (the Australian left regularly makes highly disparaging comments about white people, knowing very well that those comments will not be prosecuted as “racial vilification” since white people aren’t currently considered to be a “protected group” by society). In one wildly popular column by Australian celebrity Waleed Aly, George Brandis’s proposal to slightly weaken the country’s federal “hate speech” law was called “the whitest piece of proposed legislation I’ve encountered”. Aly argues that there is a “racial hierarchy” in Australia, with “privileged” white men like George Brandis at the top. “Whiteness” is the ultimate insult in Australia, and “old white rich men” are the ultimate boogeymen. George Brandis was widely attacked over and over again for his “white privilege”. But, by passing laws allowing the government to censor speech, all that you’re doing is giving those “old white rich men” even more power. Censorship laws will not be wielded by “vulnerable minorities”. They will be wielded by those exact same “old white rich men” who it is believed already hold too much power.

If those “privileged” white men cannot possibly understand how non-white people experience racism, then why would you trust them to enforce subjective censorship legislation in order to supposedly “protect” non-white people from racist speech in the first place? The people at the top of the “hierarchy” will be the people who get to enforce censorship legislation – not the “vulnerable minorities” who allegedly “need” that legislation. If minorities are truly “marginalized” in Australian society, then giving the government more censorship power simply means giving the government more power to oppress and “marginalize” minorities with. It is always highly ironic to see Australians lambast their government as consisting of racist white men who hate minorities… and then immediately turn around and entrust that very same “racist” government to regulate speech in order to allegedly “protect minorities” (almost all of the people patronizingly railing on about the need to “protect vulnerable minorities from hate speech” have been white people who view minorities as helpless pets, of course). They genuinely do not consider that the most “privileged” members of society – the people in the government – will be the ones to wield the power of any censorship legislation. If the government is indeed so racist, then wouldn’t it be much more likely to use its censorship power against minorities? As Aryeh Neier once said, “Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship.”

In actuality, freedom of speech has always been the best friend of minorities, and censorship legislation has historically always been used to silence minorities rather than “protecting” them – like, for example, when Mississippi tried to charge NAACP officials with “inciting violence” for violent acts that their fiery speeches supposedly “inspired”. Every single civil rights victory in history owes its success to freedom of speech. Had the First Amendment not existed to protect all speech – no matter how unpopular – then speech advocating interracial marriage, for example, could have easily been outlawed as “hate speech”, as most of the public at one point agreed that advocating interracial marriage was dangerous and damaging to society. Likewise, the abolitionist movement was once considered to be a serious threat to national security and “social cohesion”, and so was the civil rights movement. Both of those movements could have easily been outlawed as such if “hate speech” laws had existed back then – indeed, the government did repeatedly attempt to outlaw abolitionist speech. And it’s entirely possible that, at some point in the future, the public will once again agree with the views held by racists – and then those very same censorship laws that allegedly exist to “protect minorities” will be used in order to silence the views of minorities and anti-racists. After all, “hate speech” is simply unpopular speech that the general public (and/or the government) decides is “dangerous”, and what constitutes unpopular and/or “dangerous” speech changes drastically over time. Mob rule silencing unpopular speech is certainly not something that has ever worked out in the favor of minorities. Whenever someone is prosecuted for “hate speech”, it is always hailed as a “victory” for marginalized people. But a victory for government infringement on freedom of speech will never be a victory for marginalized people. By giving the government the power to criminalize “hate speech”, you are only giving the majority that you aren’t a part of the ability to put people in steel cages for voicing views that they disagree with. The only reason that you’re able to prosecute people for bigotry at the moment is because bigoted views are marginalized by society right now. In other words, you want the government to prosecute marginalized views. If you can’t see the risk that this puts you in as a minority, then you clearly have a very short memory.

Australians, Europeans, and others very often make the patently absurd and fear-mongering claim that “hate speech” laws are necessary in order to prevent genocide. During the 18C controversy, Australians constantly cited genocides like the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide as examples of the consequences of “hate speech”, and they repeatedly claimed that similar genocides would inevitably happen in Australia if 18C was slightly watered down. What they completely fail to consider is that every single genocide in modern history has been carried out by the government, and that government control of speech has not only completely failed to prevent genocides, but has, in fact, actually assisted genocides. In Yugoslavia, “hate speech” was punishable by up to ten years in prison. This didn’t stop the Yugoslavian government from putting out “hate speech” against the minorities that they were oppressing, silencing the voices of the people that they were oppressing, and committing genocide against the aforementioned minorities that they were oppressing. Freedom of speech and “international law” expert Jacob Mchangama notes:

Clearly, most contemporary proponents of hate-speech laws do not share the same ideologies and methods as the communist states of the day. Yet they seldom mention or reflect upon the fact that such laws were proposed and advocated for by antidemocratic states in which freedom of expression (as well as all other basic human rights) was routinely violated. Nor do they mention that these states, often totalitarian, had a clear interest in legitimizing and justifying their repression with the use of human rights language, inverting human rights protections into coercive human rights obligations. A good example of this paradox is the former Yugoslavia, the scene of the latest European genocide, a state very active in promoting a prohibition against hate speech at the un. Article 134 of the criminal code in force at the time of the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia punished with imprisonment of up to ten years anyone who “incites or fans national, racial, or religious hatred or discord between peoples and nationalities.” The article was mostly used by the communist regime to silence critics, but the prohibition against hate speech obviously did nothing to inculcate a culture of tolerance that could prevent ethnic cleansings and genocide, which occurred throughout Yugoslavia’s breakup.

Likewise, before and during the Rwandan Genocide, the government of Rwanda put out “hate speech” against the Tutsi minority while eventually carrying out a campaign of mass murder against them. No dissenting voices were allowed to be aired – the “hate speech” in Rwanda was certainly not part of a free marketplace of ideas, but was, in fact, aired by the government and was the only speech that the public was allowed to hear (the modern-day government of Rwanda now uses “hate speech” laws in order to shut down all criticism of the government). It was the same situation during the Holocaust: “hate speech” was put out by the genocidal government of Nazi Germany and anyone who questioned the government’s “hate speech” was forcibly silenced. Genocide is absolutely not an argument for government control of speech; quite the opposite, in fact. The government has been the single biggest oppressor of minorities throughout all of recorded history – always using its censorship power to silence the voices of minorities – yet you genuinely trust the government to regulate and censor speech in order to allegedly “protect minorities”?

Much of the debate in Australia surrounding 18C revolved around how “racist” Australians supposedly are. It was repeatedly said that, if 18C was weakened, then bigots would “dominate” the public debate, and that there would be a free-for-all on minorities. There was constant fear-mongering about what would happen without “hate speech” legislation: not only would Australia explode into white supremacy, but there would be race riots and even full-blown genocide. For one, this is an extremely elitist, condescending, and paternalistic view of the Australian public. The view that the plebeian masses are so stupid and so savage that they simply cannot handle being exposed to certain views – that they need to be “protected” from themselves – is the view that has motivated every single censor throughout history, from the era of Socrates to the Victorian era to the Antebellum era, when censors used “hate speech”-type legislation to censor criticism of slavery. Second, if Australia was truly so racist, then it wouldn’t have “hate speech” legislation supposedly intended to “protect vulnerable minorities” in the first place. In a truly racist society, “hate speech” legislation would be used to silence minorities, just like it’s used to silence LGBT people in Russia (a truly homophobic society).

To quote Jonathan Rauch: “The case for hate-speech prohibitions mistakes the cart for the horse, imagining that anti-hate laws are a cause of toleration when they are almost always a consequence. In democracies, minorities do not get fair, enforceable legal protections until after majorities have come around to supporting them. By the time a community is ready to punish intolerance legally, it will already be punishing intolerance culturally. At that point, turning haters into courtroom martyrs is unnecessary and often counterproductive.” “Hate speech” laws are heavily based on a classic “white man’s burden” mindset: that minorities are much more delicate and fragile than white people and thus need white people to enforce special protections for their feelings (which, I should add, is the exact opposite of equality). But, in a society where that sort of mindset is prevalent, hatred of minorities would already be harshly punished by society. And, to be perfectly honest, I would argue that viewing minorities as weak, incompetent, helpless little infants who desperately need their delicate feelings to be guarded by noble white saviors is far more insulting and demeaning to them than anything that any racist bigot could ever say. It should be noted that some aboriginal activists actually did state that people should have the legal right to say unpleasant things about aboriginals, but the Australian left (which is almost entirely white) refers to any aboriginals who disagree with them as “coconuts” – brown on the outside, white on the inside. To the Australian left, minorities are nothing more than political props and pets that they can use in order to further an agenda. The Australian left does not believe that minorities are competent individuals who are capable of surviving on their own as equals. Rather, they see minorities as helpless, hopelessly incompetent (or “vulnerable”, as they say) children who require white saviors protecting them at all times with special privileges – and, if any minority disagrees with this, then it’s simply because they just don’t know any better. This sort of demeaning, paternalistic attitude is infinitely more damaging to minorities than any “vilifying” newspaper columns could ever be.

“Freedom of speech is never a license to hurt other people, and recklessly wounding the feelings of Muslims like Charlie Hebdo did is most definitely not an exercise of freedom of speech”, writes an Australian columnist in Medium in response to the recent massacre in France, in which twelve people were shot to death by Islamic jihadists over cartoons of Muhammed published in the controversial French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The cartoons published in Charlie Hebdo, she says, “are severe acts of racial and religious vilification which were obviously intended to incite hatred of Muslims, and they would have been prosecuted as such in my home state of Victoria.” The Australian columnist later asks, “if we ban racist hate speech, why should we not also ban disrespectful cartoons such as those found in Charlie Hebdo?” Aside from perfectly demonstrating the dangerous slippery slope of restricting speech (if the government can outlaw “racial vilification”, then why can’t it also outlaw insulting depictions of Muhammed?), this is a very typical Australian attitude – the attitude that it’s the job of the government to protect the feelings of its citizens, and that “offensive” speech inevitably leads to violent action. The extreme nanny state mentality of Australia is a strong warning to the United States that passing “hate speech” legislation is the easiest way to destroy a culture of liberty and to create a culture of people who firmly believe that the central role of the government is to be an overbearing parent to its citizens.

During the controversy over Charlie Hebdo, I have seen numerous Australians post the #JeSuisCharlie hashtag to voice their support for the magazine. I have seen them rave about their support for freedom of speech and their opposition to censorship. I have seen them post the classic “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” quote. And I have seen these EXACT SAME AUSTRALIANS voice outrage over certain proposals to water down 18C (by removing the words “offend” and “insult”) in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. I see these exact same Australian “free speech defenders” and “free speech activists” saying that, yes, Andrew Bolt should indeed have been prosecuted. In fact, pretty much every single Australian posting about Charlie Hebdo and the importance of free speech is, at the exact same time, also posting about the importance of laws against “offending” or “insulting” minorities because “human rights”. And they don’t see anything even remotely hypocritical about quoting Voltaire one minute and then demanding government censorship the next minute. In Australia, freedom of speech is something that applies only to speech that you personally approve of – “free speech” only includes “constructive” and “responsible” speech. Anything else is “hate speech” or “vilification”. And I think it’s very safe to say that, had Charlie Hebdo been published in Australia before the massacre, these very same people voicing their support for the magazine – especially the “human rights activists” – would have called for it to be banned for “racial and religious vilification”, just like Amnesty International and countless other “human rights” groups called for the Danish Muhammed cartoons to be prosecuted as “hate speech”.

“Hate speech” legislation primarily has its origins in “international human rights law”, as one can read about here. The “hate speech” provisions in these “international laws” were added at the behest of the Soviet Union. Stalin saw “hate speech” legislation as a very powerful tool that he could use in order to undermine freedom of speech on a global scale and to attack democracy, and he lobbied heavily for international bans on “hate speech”. Initially, every democratic country was highly opposed to having any kind of laws against “hate speech”, but, eventually, the Soviet Union won and “hate speech” became part of “international human rights law”. The reason that “human rights activists” and “human rights groups” are all about censorship of speech rather than protecting freedom of speech is because of Stalin’s efforts at the UN; Stalin successfully subverted the meaning of “human rights” and his legacy lives on to this day, as “human rights” now primarily means expanding government power rather than limiting government power. Right now, Islamic dictatorships are attempting to use “international human rights law” in order to pass a worldwide ban on blasphemy – it’s a perfect example of how, once “hate speech” laws are in place, they inevitably expand and grow more restrictive over time.

Australians – and especially “human rights activists” – often use “international law” as a justification for 18C. Not only do they not realize that these “hate speech” provisions in “international law” were conceived by the Soviet Union, but they also don’t consider that 18C doesn’t meet “international law” standards anyways. “International law” also mandates sanctions against “propaganda for war” and “religious hatred”, neither of which 18C covers – and 18C also doesn’t explicitly outlaw “ideas based on racial superiority or hatred” and it doesn’t explicitly criminalize membership in or financing of “racist” groups either, as “international law” mandates. The Australian left loves to use “international law” as an appeal to authority whenever it’s convenient for them, but they always ignore “international law” whenever it goes against their plans. For example, “international law” requires countries to outlaw marijuana and it also mandates that people be declared innocent until proven guilty (which would render the proposed Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill in violation of “international law”). Finally, the UN has made it quite clear that it is simply not possible to regulate “hate speech” strictly enough to meet their standards. The UN has attacked Germany for not prosecuting a writer who voiced a negative view of mass immigration. The UN has attacked Sweden – easily among the most politically correct countries in the world – for not cracking down on “hate speech” strictly enough. The UN has even attacked France for not banning Salman Rushdie’s controversial book The Satanic Verses, calling the book an “incitement to racial hatred”. If you allow a bureaucratic organization run primarily by tinpot dictators to decide your laws, then you might as well stop calling yourself a democracy.

If someone hates me, then I want to know about it so that I know who to avoid. And, if a politician (or other public figure) holds bigoted views, then I want them to make those views as widely known as possible – and I want them to use the most vile, extreme, offensive language possible – so that people do not accidentally vote for them or support them. In a free speech culture like the United States, politicians are much less afraid to speak their minds and, as a result, they sometimes say bigoted things. When these politicians do say bigoted things, their bigotry becomes public knowledge and their careers are destroyed. They ruin any chances that they had of gaining more power. But, in a culture where “hate speech” is illegal, bigots are forced to keep their bigoted thoughts a secret. As such, politicians will not openly reveal their bigotry – or will use dog-whistle language – and, as a result, they have a much higher chance of actually gaining power and thus turning their bigoted thoughts into actual bigoted policies.

What characterizes the Australian free speech debate is selective outrage fueled by identity politics along with a heavy dose of cognitive dissonance. True freedom of speech is an equalizer. If you can say something about one group, but not about another group, then people are not equal. If one group can say something, but not another group, then that’s not equality. The Australian left was outraged when the Australian government passed laws against “advocating terrorism” intended to target radical Muslims, but would the Australian left defend the right of neo-Nazis to advocate terrorism against Muslims? Of course not. They wouldn’t even defend the right of neo-Nazis to speak at all. Why, then, should the law protect the right of radical Muslims to advocate terrorism when it doesn’t even allow racists to “offend” or “insult”, let alone to advocate terrorism? If a law can be used to target neo-Nazis, then it could just as easily be used to target minorities. If you’re going to truly defend freedom of speech, then you have to defend freedom of speech for everyone – even for groups that you profoundly despise, whether they’re Islamic jihadists or neo-Nazis. You cannot make distinctions based on groups. If, for example, you believe that Jews should be allowed to advocate killing neo-Nazis, then you should also believe that neo-Nazis should be allowed to advocate killing Jews. If you believe that you should be allowed to call for the execution of terrorists or pedophiles, then you should also be allowed to call for the execution of Jews, Muslims, gays, blacks, or any other group. Otherwise, the only distinction that you’re making is a distinction based on group identity politics.

The United States does not allow such viewpoint-based distinctions to be made, but Australia does. Hence why section 80.2A of Australia’s Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995 makes it illegal to “urge violence against groups based on race, religion, nationality or ethnic or political opinion”. So, in other words, you can “urge violence” against some groups, but not others. Just like you can “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” – or “vilify” – people based on some characteristics, but not based on “race, colour or national or ethnic origin”, thus effectively giving certain groups of people special protections. You can legally hate some groups, but it’s illegal to hate certain other groups. That’s not equality. It is profoundly demeaning and infantilizing to minorites (or “protected groups”) to say that they are too weak and too fragile to be equals in a free society, and it strongly echoes the classic “white man’s burden” colonialism of yesteryear. In the US, there is a universal standard for inciting violence that does not take group or viewpoint into account. Advocating violence is legal – no matter who you’re advocating violence against – up until the point when it directly creates imminent lawless action (such as handing someone a gun and yelling “SHOOT!”). Saying “kill the rich” or “kill racists” is legal. So is saying “kill blacks” or “kill Jews”. But directly instructing an armed mob to “go kill that racist over there” is not legal, and neither is directing a mob outside of someone’s house to “burn that Jew’s house down”.

In the landmark 1992 case of R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (which involved a cross being burned on an African-American family’s lawn), the US Supreme Court ruled that even unprotected speech that violates criminal law – such as threats, intimidation, and fighting words – cannot be treated more harshly by the law simply because the unprotected speech expresses a hateful or racist “viewpoint”. Ergo, a racist threatening to kill someone because they’re black must be treated the same way by the law as a communist threatening to kill someone because they’re rich. One cannot be treated more severely than the other simply because it is based on a different viewpoint. The law cannot have different rules for different viewpoints as far as speech goes. So, even George Brandis’s proposed amendment to Section 18C of Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act making public intimidation – which he defined as “to cause fear of physical harm” – unlawful if based on racial characteristics would be declared unconstitutional in the United States since it makes a viewpoint-based distinction. Punishing someone differently because they intimidated another person in a racist way amounts to punishing people based on their thoughts and viewpoints, which is unconstitutional in the US. It would also be unconstitutional for the law in the United States to make any distinction between speech that was made as part of a “public discussion” and speech that wasn’t made as part of a “public discussion”.

The American left does not support “hate speech” legislation because the American left knows very well that restricting speech is a very slippery slope, and “hate speech” laws could (and would) easily be used to silence, for example, pro-Palestine protesters the same way that, in France, merely saying that Israel should be boycotted will get you charged with “discrimination” (the Zionist lobby is the biggest supporter of “vilification” laws in Australia, making it rather ironic that the anti-Israel Australian left also vehemently supports said laws). To the contrary, the people of Australia see the government as the mediator of all debates, and they rely on the power of the state to protect their feelings. They wholly trust the government to regulate all aspects of their lives, and they want the government telling them what they’re allowed to think and say. They are terrified of the “harm” that unpleasant speech will cause. They are terrified of what will happen if people are allowed to speak their minds, and they genuinely believe that, as Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane has said, “genocide begins with words.” Weakening “hate speech” laws would “unleash a darker, even violent, side of our humanity”, Soutphommasane stated. In other words, if “undesirable” views are expressed openly, it will lead to mass social unrest and widespread violence, so the general public simply cannot handle being exposed to “dangerous” views.

That’s the exact same logic used by the censors in the Antebellum era, who used “hate speech”-type legislation in order to silence all criticism of slavery on the basis that it would “incite” hatred and violence against slaveowners and the South. It’s also the exact same logic used by Russia and other countries that criminalize “gay pornography” on the grounds that promoting LGBT rights “harms society” and is considered to be highly “offensive” by the vast majority of people in those countries. And, if “hate speech” laws had existed in the United States during the civil rights era, then Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders would have been charged with “hate speech” – and most of the general public would have supported it at the time. That’s what happens when you allow mob rule to dictate which opinions are allowed to be legally expressed. You may very well find your views being outlawed when society decides that they’re “harmful” and “dangerous”, and then what right will you have to complain? After all, you campaigned to ban “hateful” views on the exact same grounds – that they were “harmful” and “dangerous”. Unless, of course, you believe that your views are objectively good and that opposing views are objectively evil, as “human rights activists” almost always do. But no view is objectively good or objectively evil, and the government should never have the power to ban any opinion, no matter how “evil” that opinion may or may not be.

If you hadn’t already gathered, Australia takes “hate speech” (or “vilification”) very, very, very seriously. When Australian radio personalities John Laws and Steve Price described a gay reality TV couple as “young poofs” on the air, they were prosecuted and found guilty of “homosexual vilification” (John Laws has also been taken to court for referring to gay men as “pillow-biters” on the air). When someone in Australia makes a tiny Facebook page containing some racist jokes, it makes the national news and government investigations are launched. Even if someone in Australia makes just one Facebook post that’s deemed “racist”, the national news will cover it and the government will get involved (which, of course, merely gives the “online vilification” way more exposure than it ever would have had otherwise). Australians have repeatedly demanded online ombudsmen and government Internet filtering because they are absolutely terrified that racist comments made on the Internet will destroy “social cohesion” and lead to a new Holocaust (completely ignoring the fact, of course, that Weimar Germany had tons of “hate speech” laws and that the Nazis were prosecuted numerous times, which only turned them into sympathetic martyrs while giving them copious amounts of free publicity).

It’s a culture based entirely on fear: fear that people are so racist and so evil that a few bigoted jokes is all that it takes to kick off another genocide. And it’s also a culture based on a stunning level of naivete. “Bigotry has no place in society”, they’ll say. They genuinely believe that, if you outlaw bigotry, then people will magically stop having bigoted thoughts. In actuality, by outlawing the free expression of bigotry, all that you’re doing is driving bigots into underground echo chambers where they will only grow much more motivated and much more dangerous, free from the criticism and ridicule of the open public debate. By sending hatred underground and off-the-radar, you allow it to grow infinitely stronger rather than exposing it to the sunlight where it will die. The more vile, extreme, and outrageous the bigotry is, the more it drives people away and makes bigots look bad. Having bigots air their disgusting views in public only serves to unite people against bigotry, which is what we have repeatedly seen happen in the United States, which is the only country in the developed world without any kind of “hate speech” laws. Rather than flourishing, bigotry in the United States has died out in the free marketplace of ideas. Compare this to Europe – with its numerous “hate speech” laws – which is infinitely more racist than the United States and is currently seeing a dramatic resurgence of far-right extremism.

The only logical way to deal with hatred is to defeat it in a free marketplace of ideas while encouraging bigots to speak out openly so that everyone can plainly see how stupid, backwards, disgusting, and flat-out wrong they are. This is one of the key reasons why far-right extremism has failed to flourish in the United States, but is experiencing a drastic resurgence in popularity all over Europe, where “hate speech” legislation empowers the far-right by turning them into persecuted prophets and courtroom martyrs while also drastically magnifying their views, just like the court cases against Andrew Bolt gave his “vilifying” columns far more exposure than they would have had if they hadn’t been the subject of prosecution (the more you try to censor something, the more people will see it). History, reality, and basic logic tell us that “hate speech” legislation not only utterly fails to eliminate bigotry, but, in fact, it actually makes the problem even worse and backfires tremendously. But the Australian public simply doesn’t care about logic or reality. They care only about emotions and feelings. They just want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that racism no longer exists simply because they outlawed racism. They want to feel good, even if they’re not actually doing anything to get rid of racism. If they feel like they’re fighting racism, then that’s more than good enough. Because, at the end of the day, that’s the only thing that matters in a culture like Australia’s: feelings, no matter how utterly illogical and irrational they clearly are.

This is a culture that we should most certainly not seek to emulate in the United States. If anything, Australia should, as previously stated, serve as a strong warning to us. If you want to fight against bigotry, then you need to actually fight against it by challenging it in the open. A climate of enforced silence helps absolutely no one and, in fact, only makes bigotry far more dangerous. Banning racist speech may make people feel good and allow them to feel like they’re “fighting hate”, but all that they’re actually doing is making hate even stronger. Fascists need a victim complex in order to thrive, and “hate speech” legislation gives them exactly that. Hitler bragged about the numerous times that he was censored, and the Nazis’ numerous prosecutions for “hate speech” gave them a very important platform through the courts along with transforming them into sympathetic martyrs. History is repeating itself, as Golden Dawn members in Greece right now are using government crackdowns on them to their advantage – panting themselves as noble, heroic martyrs suffering persecution from an unjust government.

There are many reasons that such far-right extremism has failed to flourish in the United States, but our unprecedented level of freedom of speech is surely one of the biggest reasons. Bigotry cannot survive in an open, free marketplace of ideas. Bigotry can only thrive when it is pushed underground and suppressed. America’s method of using soft power (i.e. social pressure from society at large) to punish bigotry – rather than hard power (i.e. government prosecution) has proven to be the only effective method of combating the evils of bigotry. Rather than America attempting to emulate the speech laws of all other nations, all other nations should attempt to emulate the speech laws of America. Instead of flourishing through vast underground networks, bigotry would find itself defeated through a free and open exchange of ideas. The First Amendment’s absolutely one-of-a-kind free speech protections provide a very strong lesson for the rest of the world: only through the freest possible public discourse can bigotry ever actually be stopped in its tracks. The United States must stick to its guns on freedom of speech, no matter how much pressure it faces from the United Nations, from other countries, from “human rights” groups, from academics, or from anyone else. This is one issue that we simply cannot afford to compromise on in any way, shape, or form. Ever. Period.

“(These demonstrations are) not the exercise of freedom of expression, but constitute an act of violence that incurs grave pain and wounds to Korean residents in Japan”, says a resolution from South Korea demanding that Japan crack down on “hate speech” demonstrations against Korean residents. The demonstrations against Korean residents in Japan that South Korea speaks of have been organized by a fringe far-right group called Zaitokukai – a motley group of ultra-nationalist extremists whose rallies tend to attract around 20 people at the most. The group’s rallies are exceptionally small and unpopular, being widely condemned by mainstream Japanese society at large.

By contrast, the movement to ban “hate speech” in Japan has been massive. Thousands and thousands of people – citizens, “human rights activists”, politicians, lawyers, musicians, journalists, writers, celebrities, and others from all walks of life – have been persistently lobbying, protesting, petitioning, and campaigning for the Japanese government to pass comprehensive legislation outlawing all forms of “hate speech”, including “hate speech” disseminated through the Internet. This is also being demanded by the United Nations in accordance with “international human rights law”, which mandates bans against a wide range of speech.

“Human rights” groups have demanded “hate speech” laws in Japan for many years, but the campaign to outlaw “hate speech” in Japan has really been picking up steam with the activities of Zaitokukai making headlines. As one might expect, there has been quite a lot of scare-mongering about “hate speech” in the Japanese media recently, including hysterical fear-mongering about the so-called rise of online “hate speech” (fueled by the UN, which has made censoring the Internet in the name of “human rights” one of its top priorities and has been relentlessly harassing Japan to implement “hate speech” legislation). Every single argument about the need to ban “hate speech” is, of course, a painfully naive appeal to emotion, and these arguments always inevitably go on about the need to “protect human rights” and to “balance freedom of expression” against the “human rights” of others – in particular, extremely vague and impossible-to-define “human rights” like “dignity” and “honor” (one can find some examples of these arguments here, here, and here).

Censorship advocates also repeatedly stress how “hate speech” makes Japan look bad, how it could cause tension with Japan’s neighbors, how it “dishonors” Japan, and how it could tarnish Japan’s image during the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, when the entire world will be watching. Most of these censorship advocates seem to think that “hate speech” is against the law in the US, and they often use “the West” as an example for Japan to follow in outlawing “hate speech”. These cheerleaders for censorship never even consider the numerous unintended consequences of allowing the government to regulate ideas and opinions – instead, they simply focus on the evils of racism and bigotry, as if outlawing these opinions will simply cause them to magically disappear. And what constitutes “hate speech” is, of course, entirely subjective, as the label could be applied to literally anything. “Human rights activist” Yoshifu Arita – who, like any “human rights activist”, considers “hate speech” to be a form of “violence” – is among the Japanese politicians pushing the hardest for a legal ban on “hate speech”, and has even described insulting speech about politicians as “hate speech”. Like most modern-day censorship activists, Yoshifu Arita bases his pro-censorship arguments on “human rights”. “For other nations, Japan’s sense of human rights probably appears to be going against (the times)”, Arita says. In a stunning example of meaningless postmodernist discourse, Arita has also stated, “I would venture to say that we need to restrict hate speech in order to protect freedom of speech.”

Ironically (but unsurprisingly), many of the same people pushing for “hate speech” laws in Japan are upset about Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s stated intentions to change the Japanese Constitution and limit freedom of speech by making certain vaguely-defined kinds of speech “contrary to public order” and consider this to be the sign of a coming police state – even though “hate speech” has been used as a justification for Abe’s plans. “In our country, we currently have organizations spewing hate speech without any regard whatsoever for fundamental human rights”, reads one editorial in support of Abe’s plans. Many of these same people are also highly outraged about Abe’s new whistleblower-muzzling State Secrets Law, seeing it as a gross infringement on freedom of speech. Being a censorship activist requires an extreme level of mental gymnastics – convincing oneself that censorship does not curtail freedom of speech in some cases, but does in others.

Many people have pointed to views held by Japanese politicians (some of whom allegedly have links to Zaitokukai themselves) as a reason for passing “hate speech” legislation in Japan – such as, for example, this “human rights activist” who describes one Japanese politician’s controversial Twitter comments about the Ainu people as constituting “violence” against a minority. But what these people fail to consider is that “hate speech” laws will be wielded not by minorities, but by those in power – the very same people in the Japanese government who tend to hold racist views themselves. Some of the people currently pushing for “hate speech” laws in Japan include far-right nationalists like Sanae Takaichi and Toru Hashimoto, among others. Takaichi is a far-right politician and Hitler admirer with links to neo-Nazism who has already stated that she intends to use “hate speech” legislation to silence people protesting against the government because, in her view, lawmakers need to work “without any fear of criticism”. Hashimoto is another far-right politician who has publicly stated that Japan’s historical wartime “comfort women” were “necessary”.

These are the people who will have the power to censor speech, and it is 100% guaranteed that these people will abuse that power. If anything, they will use these laws allegedly intended to “protect minorities” in order to silence minorities. The path to hell is paved with good intentions, and “anti-hate speech” campaigners are nothing more than useful idiots for politicians who have far more insidious purposes for wanting to pass speech-restricting legislation. At any rate, “hate speech” laws could very easily be used to shut down pro-North Korean schools in Japan – the very same schools that Japanese racists hate so much. These schools – known as chongryon – teach allegiance to Kim Jong-un, hatred of Japan, and hatred of the West. Wouldn’t it be more than a little bit ironic if “hate speech” legislation actually allowed Japanese racists to finally shut down pro-North Korean schools, which they’ve always wanted to do?

If someone holds hateful and despicable views, then the best thing you can possibly do is to encourage them to make those views as widely known as possible. To quote the free speech activist Harvey Silverglate, “you want to know who openly hates you because you want to know whom not to turn your back to.” People who hold hateful and despicable views NEED to be seen publicly so that we know who the enemy is. In the US – where people are free to speak their minds openly – there have been countless cases of politicians and public figures making offensive comments publicly and then losing any chances that they had of gaining any more power. Take, for example, Missouri politician Todd Akin, who was slated to become a Senator until his career was completely destroyed when he publicly stated that women who are victims of “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant. The outrage following these comments was enormous, and Akin’s political career was utterly destroyed. However, if Akin had been a politician in a culture where “hate speech” is criminal, he would not have made these comments for fear of being prosecuted, and the public would never know how despicable and misguided his views truly were. As a result, he may very well have gained more political power.

Rather than getting rid of bigots, “hate speech” laws have the effect of pacifying bigots, forcing them to make themselves appear more civil and reasonable. This simply helps them gain support, as the public would never actually support a raving lunatic bigot. The more extreme and outrageous bigots are, the more they damage their cause and the more they drive people against bigotry. Indeed, one suspects that a key reason why so many Japanese far-right-wingers and nationalists want to ban “hate speech” is because extremists like Zaitokukai are making them look bad. If you really want to make people hate bigots, then you should encourage bigots to be as loud, obnoxious, vile, offensive, and extreme as possible. A perfect case-in-point here would be the Westboro Baptist Church, whose disgusting homophobic demonstrations at funerals have done more to advance the cause of gay rights and to unite people against homophobia than perhaps any other group ever has.

Likewise, the disgusting racist demonstrations of Zaitokukai have brought the issue of racism in Japanese society to the forefront and have united people against racism in a way never before seen in Japan, driving people to speak out against racism in Japanese society rather than simply ignoring it and pretending that it doesn’t exist. Compare this to the recent anti-Islam demonstrations in Germany – a country which has extremely strict “hate speech” laws. These German demonstrations against “Islamification” have gained huge support by not coming across as overtly bigoted. If these demonstrators had been waving Nazi flags and chanting “KILL THE MUSLIMS!”, they would gain no support and would, in fact, do a great deal of damage to the anti-immigration movement. But, in countries like Germany, bigots are required by law to hide their true feelings, so the public has no way of knowing how bigoted they truly are and, as a result, the public may very well end up supporting them.

Take, for example, the case of France. When France banned anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala from giving shows, he was immediately transformed into a superstar and public martyr figure, with the “hate speech” cases against him providing him with tons of free advertising and attracting countless new supporters, who even marched through France chanting anti-Semitic slogans in support of Dieudonné. Likewise, when France recently banned pro-Palestinian protests, the protests immediately escalated into violent riots. And, for an even more recent example, France prosecuted the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo numerous times under “hate speech” legislation, but that most certainly didn’t stop the tragic shooting at the magazine’s headquarters from occurring. Censorship never gets rid of the things that it aims to censor – if anything, it only makes the problems that it attempts to solve even worse. Censorship either gives the censored much more exposure and magnifies their views or it attempts to forcibly sweep them under the rug, driving them underground where they grow stronger and more dangerous.

“International human rights law” – which was heavily influenced by the Soviet Union – mandates the banning of “hate speech” and “hate groups” along with “propaganda for war”, and the UN’s “human rights” bodies have used it to demand bans on everything from Australia’s E. S. “Nigger” Brown Stand (which, by the way, had absolutely nothing to do with race) to Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses, which the UN’s “human rights” leaders called an “incitement to racial hatred” and attacked France for not banning. The UN has harassed every nation from Germany to Sweden about not enforcing “hate speech” laws strictly enough, making it abundantly clear that it is simply not possible to censor speech enough to satisfy the international “human rights” lobby.

Every “human rights” group – from Amnesty International (which implicitly called for the prosecution of the Danish Muhammed cartoons) to Civil Rights Defenders – strongly supports laws against “hate speech” while still claiming to champion “freedom of speech”. One can plainly see how extremely dangerous the ideology of “human rights” is. This is a dogma which – like all tyrannical dogmas – sincerely believes that it is driven by a core, unique goodness which must never be questioned, and that, as such, any opinion or idea that questions or opposes it must always be outlawed since any opposition to an ideology that believes itself to be objectively good must therefore be objectively evil. Censoring allegedly “hateful” speech has become one of the core aspects of the “human rights” doctrine, and this is indeed what “human rights” legislation has done all over the world.

In Australia, the “human rights” lobby almost passed a law called the “Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill”, which would have made it illegal to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” anyone for any reason, including for their “political opinion”. The law stated that people were to be declared guilty until proven innocent. It also would have outlawed any expression of religious belief if someone were “offended” by it, and it would have effectively outlawed all criticism of the government. The Australian Greens felt that this proposed law – which was only narrowly defeated – “didn’t go far enough”.

A key aspect of the “human rights” doctrine is that speech and action are identical, and that “hurtful” speech is no different than violent action. Indeed, people in Japan do not seem to understand that “hate speech” and “discrimination” are not necessarily the same thing. They constantly refer to “hate speech” as “discrimination“, and they talk about people “engaging in racial discrimination” on the Internet. They speak of the need to pass an “anti-discrimination” law to curtail “hate speech” (Japanese courts have ruled that “hate speech” rallies “constitute racial discrimination” and have repeatedly upheld that decision). To them, an “anti-discrimination” law would automatically outlaw “hate speech”. They don’t seem to comprehend that you can outlaw “discrimination” (e.g. discrimination in employment and service) without going into the realm of speech. In addition, much of the “hate speech” debate in Japan has been dominated by claims that not only does “hate speech” cause violence, but that “hate speech” itself is violence. This postmodernist blurring of the lines between speech and action is incredibly dangerous, and it’s what characterizes dictatorships like Pakistan, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia – dictatorships which no free and democratic society should ever seek to emulate in any way.

Japan’s Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech – but, in today’s postmodernist world where language is meaningless, the universal consensus outside of the United States is that the right to freedom of speech does not protect “hate speech”, with “hate speech” being anything that the government deems undesirable. What happens in Japan will foreshadow what will be the future of free speech in the rest of the world as well. In Japan, the “human rights” lobby is not only attempting to pass laws against “racist” speech. The “human rights” lobby in Japan has also been persistently campaigning for laws against “sexist” artwork, rape-themed pornography, and more. If Japan does not reject the wretched tyranny of “human rights”, then the cancer of “human rights” censorship will inevitably expand until all areas of life are censored subject to the whims of “human rights” bureaucrats. If “human rights” censorship finds its way to Japan, then it will eventually spread even further and the censorship laws that were once a thing of the past may very well end up being the wave of the future. And, if the “human rights” lobby has their way, then the entire world will end up being like North Korea.

Japan will not eliminate racism by sweeping it under the rug with highly dangerous “hate speech” legislation. Only by confronting bigotry head-on and responding to hateful speech with more speech – not with enforced silence – will Japan be able to tackle the deep-seated bigotry in its society. Japan needs to follow America’s example and provide the maximum possible protection for freedom of speech, even when that speech is ugly, vile, hateful, and disgusting. Right now, Japan takes “international human rights law” very seriously, and seems to think that it’s actual law rather than meaningless gentlemen’s agreements pushed onto sovereign nations by dictators. Japan needs to stand up to the dictator-dominated UN and the UN’s pet “human rights” lobby, and it needs to fight the scourge of bigotry by defeating it in the marketplace of ideas rather than by burying its head in the sand with “hate speech” laws intended to make the problem of bigotry less public and overt.

What is legal and what is moral are not necessarily the same things, nor should they be. Just because something is considered to be wrong by most people does not mean that it should be made the subject of legislation. In Japan and elsewhere, the argument for banning “hate speech” is based around the need to reject racism and bigotry, but racism is not something that can ever be defeated with legislation. Racism is something that must be defeated by civil society and individuals – not by the legislation of thoughts. Only by exposing bigotry to the light can bigotry genuinely be defeated. Bigotry can in no way be defeated by forcing hate groups into underground echo chambers where their members will only grow more zealous and motivated, free from public ridicule. Sunlight is always the best disinfectant.

There is absolutely no objective criteria for determining what constitutes “hate speech”. “Human rights activists” often cite the “emotional harm” caused by “hate speech”, but “emotional harm” is not something which can be objectively measured in any way, and passing laws based on emotions is an incredibly dangerous path. If racists are harassing or threatening people, then such conduct can simply be dealt with through laws against harassment and threats – not through the banning of ideas or opinions. Once a government steps into the realm of regulating which opinions its citizens are allowed to hold, there is no turning back – the spectrum of prohibited opinions will inevitably expand and change over time, as one can see currently happening in the UK and all over the world. Once “hate speech” laws are passed, they always grow more restrictive with time. Like all moral panics, the hysteria surrounding “hate speech” is driven by a deeply naive desire to “protect society” and to create a peaceful, safe, and secure world where nobody is ever hurt or offended by anything.

Venerable college newspaper The Dartmouth recently published an execrable column by Zach Traynor calling on the US to ban “offensive” kinds of speech like all other developed nations have already done. While the column was heavily criticized, it nonetheless reflects a very dangerous mindset which is extremely widespread in other countries and which is growing increasingly common in the United States as well. The article states that the US needs to pass laws against “hate speech” because “this country is supposedly built on freedom and equality, not on the right to say whatever you want without significant consequences.” Like all pro-censorship arguments, the article is entirely based around appeal to emotion and, like most censorship advocates, Traynor makes heavy use of Orwellian newspeak and doublethink to describe how censorship “protects freedom” and is a fundamental aspect of “democracy”. “How does America benefit from allowing speech that many other developed and democratic countries have wisely deemed to be against their modern values?”, Traynor asks.

Zach Traynor’s argument is an argument based on the ultra-Orwellian “human rights” doctrine. The doctrine of “human rights” is based heavily on the ideology of the Soviet Union, which is the country responsible for the creation of “hate speech” laws worldwide. As opposed to natural rights – which aimed to limit the power of the government – “human rights” aims to expand the powers of the government as much as possible in order to supposedly protect extremely vague and undefinable “rights” like “dignity” and “honor” and “respect”. And one of the core aspects of the “human rights” ideology is that any idea which opposes “human rights” – whether it’s bigotry or “propaganda for war” – must be aggressively prosecuted by the government. This is because, like all other tyrannical ideologies, the “human rights” ideology sincerely believes that it is driven by a core, unique “goodness” and that this “goodness” therefore must not ever be questioned. “Human rights activists” see themselves as elite, enlightened angels tasked with protecting the savage, plebeian masses from their baser instincts. Not only that, but dictatorships like Saudi Arabia see “human rights” as a powerful weapon that they can use to influence other countries to, for example, institute blasphemy laws. I would go as far as to say that “human rights” is the single biggest threat to democracy and liberty that we currently face.

In places like Europe and the Commonwealth, “hate speech” laws are some of the most cherished “human rights protections” in existence, and nobody would ever propose getting rid of them (even proposing to slightly weaken them would provoke massive backlash). In a column for The Guardian decrying “censorship”, Dorian Lynskey states the following: “Freedom of expression always has exceptions, for example legally proscribed hate speech, but allow too many and it suffers death by a thousand cuts. While many ideas are offensive, only a few should be deemed so unacceptable that they can’t be heard.” In Europe, this is absolutely as anti-censorship as you can possibly get. Indeed, the people in the comments felt that Lynskey was going way too far in his defense of free speech. This is because, in Europe, most people believe that any opinion that they don’t like should be outlawed, while the “hardcore free speech absolutists” believe that only “dangerous” and/or “offensive” speech – like “hate speech” – should be outlawed. European politicians and “free speech activists” will very regularly speak about the importance of freedom of speech and the evils of censorship – and, the next minute, they will speak about the importance of ensuring that the government aggressively prosecutes “hate speech” and other speech which allegedly poses a threat to “freedom” and “democracy”. They genuinely do not consider banning “hate speech” to be a form of censorship at all. To a typical European, the idea that freedom of speech protects “hate speech” is downright absurd. Ask just about any European – or just about anyone outside of the US, for that matter – and they will tell you with the utmost certainty that “hate speech is not free speech”.

But there is absolutely no objective criteria for determining what constitutes “hate speech”. It is entirely dependent on mob rule. And anyone who has taken even a casual look at history knows that the opinion of the majority is not always right – in fact, it is frequently dead wrong. Right now, most people believe that racism is “dangerous”. But there was a time not so long ago when most people believed that speaking out against racism was “dangerous” and posed a threat to society. If not for the robust protections afforded by the First Amendment, the US government could have very easily banned Martin Luther King, Jr. from speaking on the grounds that his speech was “hateful” and “dangerous” and “inciting violence”. It is precisely because we have such strong freedom of speech that people like anti-racist activists, feminists, and gay rights activists were able to speak out openly when so many people (the majority of people, in fact) wanted them to be silenced. There was also a time when most people – particularly those in power – believed that speech which opposed slavery was hateful and dangerous and needed to be censored.

And, when you pass laws against “hate speech”, that’s who you’re giving the censorship power to: those in power. The argument is often made that freedom of speech is something which only serves “old, rich white men”, who “already have too much power”. Laws against “hate speech” are necessary, they will say, to protect “vulnerable minorities” in a society where they are “marginalized”. But who actually gets to wield the power of the law? The people in power – the very same people that people like Traynor claim are oppressing minorities. Those laws against “hate speech” will not be wielded by “vulnerable minorities”. They will be wielded by the very same “old, rich white men” who you claim are oppressing minorities. It requires an immense amount of blind, naive trust in the government to give them the power to legally regulate thoughts and ideas. Genocide is often used as an argument for outlawing “hate speech”, but who actually commits genocides? The government does. The government has been the number one oppressor of minorities throughout all of history, yet you trust the government to regulate speech in order to allegedly “protect minorities”?

By giving more censorship power to the government, you are effectively giving them more power to oppress minorities with. The government is the one that will decide what constitutes “hate speech”, and that power will inevitably be used to silence voices that the government deems to be a threat (like those aforementioned minority voices that you claim are already “marginalized”). Just ask the pro-Palestinian activists that Israel regularly censors with “hate speech” and “incitement” laws. Ask the people all over the world who are prevented from criticizing their governments by laws against “incitement”. Even laws against things as simple as “genocide ideology” have been used to silence criticism of the government. The same thing applies to US colleges, where campus speech codes have been used to shut down, for example, anti-NSA speech. People who argue for censorship always manage to convince themselves that the censorship powers that they want will only be used against things that they want to be censored, but that is simply never how censorship actually works. “Human rights activists” will regularly campaign to have far-right political demonstrations banned, then they will be absolutely outraged when the government uses its banning powers to ban an LGBT pride parade or something else that they approve of. They simply cannot grasp the fact, when you give the government the power to ban any speech, that power will always be used against speech that you approve of at some point.

Zach Traynor’s article is very European in another way: “hate speech”, he says, should be banned because it is “not acceptable”. This is a very European way of thinking. Europeans – generally speaking – genuinely cannot fathom how a person can disapprove of something without wanting it to be outlawed. In Europe, if you support someone’s right to say something, then you automatically agree with what they’re saying. For example, I recently saw Europeans online who were absolutely baffled by how Obama supports gay rights, but doesn’t imprison anti-gay preachers. The European mind simply cannot process the idea that someone could defend freedom of speech for people that they profoundly disagree with. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Europe. It’s beyond their comprehension. Every single gay activist and gay interest group in Europe (and outside of the US in general) vehemently supports imprisoning people for homophobic speech. Every politician and activist in Europe firmly believes that speech that they consider “not acceptable” should be outlawed.

But, ultimately, what is “not acceptable” is entirely subjective. As I have already stated, there was a time not so long ago when advocating for gay rights was considered to be “not acceptable” by the overwhelming majority of people. What drives people to advocate for censorship laws like these is the foolish belief that attitudes will never change and that the majority opinion will always be on their side. That is simply not the case and never has been. In the Weimar Republic, homosexuality and transsexuality were widely accepted. Then the Nazis came to power and all that radically changed in an instant. In Europe today, the same thing is happening again. If the government gets to outlaw ideas that the majority deems to be “not acceptable”, then what’s to stop the government from outlawing pro-gay speech when the majority of people decide that being gay is “not acceptable”? That’s exactly what Russia and other countries are doing right now, after all. If freedom of speech only protects popular speech, then it is not free speech at all. Freedom of speech is intended to protect the most unpopular and irresponsible forms of speech – the only kinds of speech that people would actually want to be censored.

Another one of the most widely-used arguments for censoring speech is that certain speech is likely to “incite violence”. In America, “inciting violence” – from a legal standpoint – is an immediate, direct, and imminent thing, such as handing someone a gun and saying “SHOOT!”. In Europe and the rest of the world, however, “inciting violence” refers to any speech which could possibly lead someone to believe that the use of force could ever be justified. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement that “a riot is the language of the unheard” could easily be prosecuted in Europe for “inciting violence”, and Denis Diderot’s statement that “man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest” could very well be prosecuted for “inciting murder”. In Europe, saying things like “Hitler was right” and “Hitler did nothing wrong” would not only be considered “incitement to hatred”, but also “incitement to violence”. Once again, what is likely to “incite violence” is entirely subjective and it’s something that the government determines. When the Qatari government sentenced a poet to life imprisonment, it was because they believed that his poem was “inciting violence” by glorifying revolutions against governments. Had the very same poet written a poem glorifying anti-Israel jihadists or people who butcher gays, however, he certainly wouldn’t have been prosecuted – because the government of Qatar decides what kind of “incitement” should be legally punishable, and it’s entirely subjective.

Likewise, if a pastor saying that gays should be executed can be prosecuted for “inciting murder” – as so many Europeans said that he should be – then what about all of the people saying that homophobes should be executed? Couldn’t those people also be prosecuted for “inciting murder”? The only real difference is which particular group of people you’re saying should be executed – in other words, it’s a mere difference of opinion. When you give that kind of censorship power to the government, don’t be the least bit surprised when you find it being used against you. Even prohibitions on speech which advocates breaking the law can be easily abused – for example, such laws could very well be used to shut down pro-marijuana advocacy and they could certainly be used to shut down much of the discussion regarding recent riots in Ferguson and Berkeley as “inciting violence”.

The idea behind “incitement” is an idea with its roots in collectivism. Essentially, it is saying that people are not responsible for their own actions since everyone is a collective and personal responsibility does not exist. The idea is nothing new. During the Victorian era, music was often censored because many believed that it would “incite violence”, just as modern-day “human rights activists” try to get reggae music banned for “inciting violence” against gays and modern-day feminists try to get songs like “Blurred Lines” banned for “inciting rape”. Throughout history, any opinion that was deemed to be a threat to state power has been prosecuted out of fear that it would “incite” the masses against government authority. If speech can “incite” someone to commit murder – necessitating the need for certain speech to be outlawed – then couldn’t it just as easily be argued that a woman wearing provocative clothing can “incite” someone to rape, therefore meaning that provocative clothing should be outlawed? This is essentially the exact same logic that people who argue for censorship are using. True freedom of speech is not subject to analysis of outcomes and all censorship campaigns are based on fear-mongering about the supposedly adverse consequences that certain speech could have if not censored.

Censorship of speech always starts with the most offensive and outrageous speech. Pro-censorship advocates will point to this speech and ask, “how could anyone possibly defend this?” They’ll use the most disgusting and repulsive speech as an excuse to institute censorship since nobody would ever want to defend that speech – and, if someone did defend that speech, then that person would be equated with whatever the disgusting speech was. This slimy, underhanded tactic must be called out wherever it occurs. First off, the most offensive and outrageous speech is the speech that would never actually appeal to any sensible person and, in actuality, would only make the speaker (and their ideas) look bad. Second, the most offensive and outrageous speech is the speech that needs the most protection, since nobody wants to outlaw popular and “acceptable” speech. And third, when the government starts to regulate any kind of speech, it never stops there. The censorship always continues to expand and expand – and that censorship will eventually find its way to you.

Zach Traynor’s article – like a similar moronic article from clickbait cesspool Cracked (perfectly debunked by Greg Lukianoff here) – brings up the case of R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul to fraudulently claim that burning a cross in someone’s yard is protected by the First Amendment. This is not the case at all. The case of R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul involved a particular law that was used to indict a cross-burner – this particular law was ruled to be unconstitutional, but there are other laws which can be used to stop cross-burnings on people’s lawns. Traynor’s article also brings up the Westboro Baptist Church, which is often used as an example by pro-censorship advocates as to why the First Amendment supposedly goes too far. But, if anything, the Westboro Baptist Church is an argument against censorship. By making homophobes look completely insane and unreasonable, the Westboro Baptist Church has actually done more to advance the cause of gay rights and to unite people against homophobia than anyone else. The more offensive and outrageous a bigot is, the less chance that anyone will take them seriously and the more damage they do to the cause of bigotry. By passing laws against “hate speech”, you are effectively forcing bigots to make themselves appear reasonable, which can only work in the bigots’ favor. In addition, you are sweeping bigotry under the rug, which allows people to simply pretend that it doesn’t exist rather than being forced to confront it and deal with it head-on.

H.L. Mencken once said: “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” Jihadists, neo-Nazis, and other scoundrels provide a powerful boogeyman that the government can use as an excuse to regulate speech. The people who defend freedom of speech – even for scoundrels – will inevitably be maligned and vilified as supporting whoever they are defending. But, in actuality, those people are the only ones with true principles. I’ll use another quote here, this one from Thomas Paine: “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” When the ACLU defended the right of neo-Nazis to march through a town filled with Holocaust survivors, they used the same arguments that they had used when they defended the civil rights marchers of the 1960s – and the people trying to censor the neo-Nazis also used the same arguments that the people trying to censor the civil rights marchers had used. If neo-Nazis can be censored by the government, then so can anti-racism activists. This is why a true defender of freedom of speech has to defend freedom of speech for everyone, including for the most vile and disgusting and despicable individuals.

Ultimately, this is a lesson that people like Zach Traynor will never be able to understand. People who advocate for censorship laws are not capable of responding to logical arguments – emotion is the only thing that they understand. They think to themselves, “bigotry is bad, so we need to ban bigotry”. They sincerely believe that, if you ban something, then that thing will magically cease to exist. They don’t even consider the numerous unintended consequences and ramifications that result from allowing the government to regulate ideas and opinions. They don’t consider the fact that, when you give the government the power to censor speech, that power will inevitably be abused. The European mindset held by people like Zach Traynor has now found its way to Japan, with “human rights activists” like Yoshifu Arita even describing insulting speech about politicians as “hate speech” and politicians who campaigned for “hate speech” laws in Japan now wanting to use those laws to stop people from protesting against the government. It is sadly inevitable that, sooner or later, the European mindset will come to the US as well. We already see a wide range of opinions being labeled “hate speech” in the US, from right-wing talk radio to abstinence campaigners.

“Hate speech” is an extremely Orwellian term used to shut down all debate, and it can easily be applied to almost anything. Canada, Australia, and Sweden are among the countries which have ruled that even completely true and factual statements can be outlawed as “hate speech” if they are likely to stir up “hatred” and/or offend certain groups. Other countries sincerely believe that government regulation of “offensive” or “insulting” speech is crucial to protect “rights” and “freedoms”. They genuinely believe that outlawing certain political parties, organizations, and ideologies is essential in order to protect “civil and political rights” along with “democracy”. This is because, in the culture of “human rights”, rights are privileges granted from the government and can only be exercised in a manner that the government deems to be in line with its own goals. And this is the culture that people like Zach Traynor want to bring to the US.

Well, personally, I’m not going to allow people like Zach Traynor to prevail in America. So long as I am alive, I will continue to fight against the wretched tyranny of “human rights” and government censorship. By itself, the First Amendment means nothing. For example, China’s constitution has a similar passage: “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.” Almost every single country in the world supposedly guarantees “freedom of speech”, but the United States is the only country that actually takes it seriously. The First Amendment has only grown so strong due to repeated tests and court precedents. We must not allow pressure from the international community, from the “human rights” lobby, and from “academics” like Zach Traynor to change that. Unfettered freedom of speech is a uniquely American value that crosses political lines, and it absolutely must stay that way. Nothing that anyone could possibly say could ever be worse than a law preventing them from saying it, and allowing the government to regulate speech is infinitely more dangerous than any speech could ever possibly be.

One lasting legacy (among others) of the Soviet Union is its deceptive distortion of language – dressing up ugliness with innocuous and nice-sounding terms, as predicted by George Orwell in his seminal and much-quoted work Nineteen Eighty-Four. For example, if someone says that they’re for “human rights”, that means that they’re for Stalinist thought control, hardcore government authoritarianism, and international warmongering. “Human rights activists” are, in actuality, a vile, twisted, and extremely dangerous plague upon humanity. So, too, are the self-proclaimed supporters of “social justice” (who are, of course, often the same people). “Social justice” blogging is most associated with Tumblr, a blogging platform started in February 2007 which is now among the most visited sites on the Internet. “Social justice” bloggers are notoriously zealous and exceptionally nasty people, which has led to the coining of the ironic term “social justice warrior”, or SJW for short.

SJWs – almost all of whom are white, upper-middle-class college students – picture themselves as persecuted, oppressed crusaders for peace and equality. But, upon any level of inspection, this claim immediately falls apart. I have been on the Internet since I was a small child and I have perused some of the most extreme and disturbing corners of the web. I have had personal encounters with every manner of vile cretin – the sorts of people who would make even Charles Manson himself blush. With that said, never have I encountered anyone who was so giddy about their hatred than the people who make up the SJW community. These are people who, on a regular basis, call for violence and genocide against “oppressors”, whether it’s white people, heterosexual people, thin people, or just anyone who even slightly disagrees with them.

One favorite tactic that SJWs use to quash all opposition is doxxing – they will publish the personal information (real name, job, phone number, address, and so forth) of anyone that they deem to have committed an act of thoughtcrime, then they will usually encourage people to commit acts of violence against that person in real life and will do their best to have that person fired from wherever they work at. One individual who has personally experienced a wave of harassment and doxxing from legions of feral SJWs is a popular right-wing Tumblr blogger who goes by the screen name of Communismkills. I spoke to Communismkills about her experiences with SJWs. This article should not be seen as an endorsement of anything that Communismkills says. Rather, it exists simply to provide an example of just how nasty, vile, and hateful the online “social justice” crusade truly is.

A writer for various political websites which she’s asked me not to mention by name, Ashley Rae Goldenberg started the Tumblr blog Communismkills in 2011. In a manner that I’ve written about many times before, Ashley’s blog was made popular by people voicing their anger at her and attempting to censor her. Censors always greatly increase exposure and sympathy for the people and things that they aim to censor, and Ashley’s blog was certainly no exception. Ashley is no stranger to being harassed by rabid social justice fanatics, having experienced some obsessive stalking from one particular SJW in 2011. It should also be noted that /pol/ (the Nazi-filled 4chan imageboard with the unofficial motto “gas the kikes, race war now”) has a complicated love-hate relationship with the Jewish Zionist Communismkills, and has been known to talk about her on a regular basis, as she is no stranger to online fights. What’s happening to her right now, however, is on an entirely different level than anything she’s ever experienced in the past.

It all started when Ashley posted a limerick about the recent shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri: “There once was a thug named Brown / Who bum-rushed a cop with a frown / Six bullets later / He met his creator / Then his homies burnt down the town”. Funny? Perhaps not. But, however distasteful this poem may have been, it couldn’t possibly hold a candle to the reaction that SJWs would give to it. The sustained harassment campaign against Ashley for this poem – which, as of this writing, is ongoing – was kicked off by two SJW bloggers known as agalaxtical and slutsonlyclub, who posted Ashley’s personal information and encouraged other users to burn her house down.

After that, Ashley began to face a non-stop barrage of doxxing, harassment, abuse, and threats. In the name of “social justice”, Tumblr users proceeded to post Ashley’s Facebook, her mother’s Facebook, her work information, her mother’s work information, her parents’ home address, her school information, and her phone number. Numerous users have threatened to murder her and to burn down her house. They have also bombarded her university’s Facebook page in the hopes of getting her expelled. As of right now, Ashley tells me, she cannot even have her phone on due to the sheer volume of calls that she is receiving. The threats have not only been sent to Ashley, but to her mother as well. Here, for example, is a message sent to Ashley’s mother on Facebook:

Hundreds of thousands of posts have been made about Ashley, with many of them being gruesome threats calling for Ashley and/or her mother (who had no role in any of this) to be raped, burned, tortured, and/or murdered. And why do they do this, you might ask? The answer is simple: they do it for social justice, peace on Earth, equality, and harmony. After all, what could possibly be more just and righteous than sending gory death threats to aging mothers? Isn’t that what “social justice” is all about?

The answer to that question is no. No, this is not what “social justice” is all about in the least. But it IS, however, what SJW-ism is all about. Like the far-right that they claim to be so staunchly opposed to, the far-left is based entirely around hate. Humans are perpetual morons who always need a bad guy. To neo-Nazis, the bad guys are Jews, “degenerates”, and non-whites. To SJWs, the bad guys are people like Communismkills: not only is she a white person who isn’t self-flagellating, but she’s also a woman who doesn’t see herself as a victim of some evil patriarchal conspiracy. To an SJW, that’s heresy: all white people are evil and all women are victims. If a woman doesn’t think that she’s a victim, then she has “internalized misogyny” and she just doesn’t know any better, so she needs SJWs to speak on her behalf. Likewise, if a black person doesn’t tow the SJW line exactly, then they will be immediately labeled an “Uncle Tom” or “house nigger” by the extremely patronizing SJWs who see minorities as nothing more than political props and tools and who view all races as monoliths with intrinsic characteristics (which, ironically, is the absolute definition of racism).

All victim frameworks work upon single “oppressors”, and an “us vs. them” mentality is a very simple way to justify ideological dichotomy. The “social justice” movement is not at all about social justice, but about relentlessly bullying anyone who does not subscribe to their Stalinist ideology. Stormfront is often held up as an example of “online hate”, but it must be noted that the white supremacists on Stormfront do not participate in organized harassment campaigns, do not send gruesome rape and death threats to people, do not regularly call for violence, and do not engage in doxxing. Compared to the people who claim to be on “the right side of history” and crusaders for “social justice”, Stormfront is a bastion of kindness and civility. What does that say about you, SJWs, when you make neo-Nazis look positively civilized by comparison?

Ashley’s experience is not the least bit unusual in the world of online “social justice” – many, many more like her have experienced relentless bullying, abuse, intimidation, doxxing, threats, and even real, physical violence just for saying or doing something that upset the SJW hivemind. What separates SJWs from common sociopathic bullies is that SJWs genuinely believe that what they are doing is helping to advance society and to turn the world into a more loving, equal place. They abuse and threaten people with the full approval of their own consciences, completely secure in their belief that what they are doing is the good and righteous thing. A villain who sincerely believes that they are a hero is perhaps the worst kind of villain there is. To quote C.S. Lewis: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

I asked Ashley if she had anything to say about SJWs and this was her response: “Social justice warriors love to whine about how they support ‘safe spaces’, and yet, the moment someone disagrees with them, it’s a witch hunt. Post their personal information, threaten their mother, call for arson, demand rape, everything they claim to be against. Imagine if the tables were turned here. Imagine if one of those social justice bloggers who wrote ‘kill whitey’ had his employer contacted. You know that would never happen, since it’s politically correct to want to kill whitey, but imagine it. There would be outrage. ‘How dare you! This is freedom of speech!’ Yet, if the messages I receive are any indication, these people don’t believe in freedom of speech at all; they actually believe threatening someone and their family is a ‘consequence’ of having an opinion that doesn’t fall in line. They truly believe one thing: your freedom–and ‘safe zone’–ends where my feelings begin.”

She couldn’t possibly be more right. Like “human rights”, “social justice” is a very toxic and very dangerously authoritarian ideology that advocates the exact opposite of what its namesake describes. Make no mistake: social justice warriors are not crusaders for “social justice”. They are the biggest enemies of true social justice that currently exist in our society, and they need to be stamped out before they do even greater harm.

Finally, what SJWs do not realize is that they are single-handedly cultivating a generation of fascists. The more extreme the left becomes, the more right-wing and reactionary people will become as a result. It happened in the 1980s as a response to the left being overwhelmed with hippies and it will happen again in the future as a response to the left being overwhelmed with SJWs – only, this time, the right-wing will be far more extreme than the likes of Ronald Reagan. SJWs are paving the way for a future dominated by far-right extremists. These so-called advocates of “social justice” are the best gift that neo-Nazis could have possibly asked for: the most extreme and unpleasant aspects of the far-left amplified for all the world to see. The more absurd and outrageous SJWs become, the more the far-right gains support and sympathy. If SJWs think that they’re “oppressed” right now… well, they had better be prepared for the future that they’re helping to create.

In the 1920s, the National Socialist German Workers Party was banned by the government of Weimar Germany. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Nazis were prosecuted numerous times for “hate speech”. Rather than hinder the Nazis, this merely helped them in every way imaginable. Through the courts, the Nazis were given a platform to spread their views to a far wider section of the public than they otherwise would have had access to. Through their prosecutions, they were able to cultivate an image of themselves as martyrs and political prisoners, drawing people to their side in droves. Today, Europe is making the exact same mistake that it made with the Nazis.

The European solution to any problem is always government bans – especially in the realm of speech. Pretty much everyone outside of the US firmly believes that “hate speech is not free speech”. In fact, even the staunchest, most hardcore “libertarians” and “free speech activists” outside of the US still tend to fully support “hate speech” laws and it’s also not uncommon for “free speech activists” outside of the US to demand that people be arrested for expressing certain opinions. For example, at Britain’s “Rally for Free Expression“, “free speech activists” spoke about the need to ensure that “hate speech” remains outlawed. The concept of US-style free speech is absolutely unfathomable to Europeans and others. In addition, most of them genuinely make no distinction between speech and action – “racism” is an action, even when it’s nothing more than speech. Racist speech is an act of racial discrimination and violent speech is an act of violence. “Hate speech” is not merely speech, but a form of violence. The line between speech and action outside of the US is extremely blurred, if not outright non-existent.

As I have said before, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone outside of the US who supports full US-style freedom of speech – someone suggesting US-style freedom of speech outside of the US would be treated the same as (if not worse than) someone suggesting that murder and rape should be legalized. The concept of defending freedom of speech even for people that you profoundly despise does not exist outside of the US and neither does the idea that someone can disapprove of something without seeking to make it illegal. In Europe, more or less everyone believes that anything they don’t like should be banned by the government, whether it’s smoking, burqas, child beauty pageants, advertisements that depict women with unrealistic body sizes, or just opinions that they find “not acceptable”. To give one something of an idea of the sort of ban-happy mindset that pervades Europe, when people dressed as clowns began to carry out attacks in France, the immediate reaction was to ban anyone from dressing up as a clown.

Europeans generally expect the government to ban things that it disapproves of and they can’t even imagine the government disapproving of something without banning it. So, when they see “hate speech” coming from the US, their natural response is to believe that the US government approves of “hate speech” since it’s not banning it. Most non-Americans simply assume that the US also has “hate speech” laws and react with stunned disbelief and disgust upon finding out that it doesn’t.

But the United States does not have a problem with Nazis and fascists gaining power – not only because America is far less drawn to racism and authoritarianism than Europe is, but also because, when a crazy idea is discussed freely and openly, then that idea is also refuted freely and openly. But, when that idea is only discussed in secret, then, the first time that one hears it being presented, they are necessarily alone with the person presenting it and they do not hear the other side. That makes it much, much easier to convince people as to the validity of the idea. They’ve never heard it articulated before, and they have no idea how to counter the points being made. It also gives those who promote whatever banned idea a sort of “persecuted prophet” complex. In their minds, the fact that the state is attempting to suppress their views becomes confirmation that they have found some sort of dangerous truth. In addition, the state taking away any peaceful, non-violent methods of venting their anger and frustration is much more likely to drive them to resort to violence in order to vent their boiling rage and get their message across.

And the government knows it, too. Whereas, in the US, the government allows Nazis to speak out openly because it knows that the American public would never actually support Nazis, the governments of Europe are very much aware of how racist and how impressionable the vast majority of their population is. After all, if Nazis were truly so unpopular, then what “danger” could there possibly be in allowing them to be heard? European governments ban Nazis because they know that those Nazis actually stand a chance at gaining strong support and taking over. But, as it turns out, banning Nazis is the best possible thing for those Nazis. The more an idea is suppressed, the stronger it becomes. And there are no ideas that have been more suppressed in modern times than the ideas of the Nazis.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Aside from giving Nazis a “forbidden fruit” allure, government suppression also allows them to create vast underground networks where they go unchallenged and where their ideas are not refuted in open debate. As a result, they grow much stronger and, since they are underground and off-the-radar rather than out in the open, they are also much harder to monitor. In the United States, freedom of speech is offered infinitely more protection than anywhere else in the world (much to the chagrin of the United Nations, the international community, and the “human rights” lobby). If I wanted to, I could legally write an article about how all Jews should be exterminated like parasites and I could even legally encourage people to go out into the streets and slaughter Jewish civilians (although I highly doubt that Thought Catalog would publish such an article). The US government knows very well that, if such an article were to be published, it would be far better to allow it to be exposed to the vast swathes of the Internet where it would no doubt be widely mocked and ridiculed (and I’d assuredly also be repeatedly accused of being a Hal Turner-type government informant working to make neo-Nazis look like a bunch of lunatics). In Europe, however, I would get arrested merely for writing online statements that “reject immigration and multiculturalism” or for saying that I feel “disgusted” by same-sex marriage. Effectively, any idea that the governments of Europe disapprove of is outlawed and thus is not discussed in the open, thus driving it underground where it only festers and becomes much stronger as a result.

Aside from “protecting vulnerable minorities” (in typical “social justice” fashion, minorities are patronizingly seen as nothing more than pitiful, helpless little pets who need white people to protect their feelings), the standard go-to argument in Europe and outside of the US in general is that freedom of speech leads to things like the Holocaust. In a place like Europe – where emotion reigns supreme and logic does not exist – this would appear to make sense on the surface. But, in actuality, government suppression of speech is what leads to things like the Holocaust.

There was certainly no freedom of speech in Nazi Germany. After the Weimar government repeatedly attempted to silence the speech of the Nazis, the Nazis took over and promptly proceeded to silence the speech of anyone whom they deemed to be a threat. This obviously left no room for anyone to speak out about what the Nazis were really doing or to question them in any way. And, when you have that kind of repressive environment, then things like the Holocaust are able to happen. The people of Nazi Germany did not know about the Holocaust – and, if the Holocaust had been known about by the public, then it would never have been supported. Nazi Germany is certainly not the only example of a genocidal government putting out “hate speech” itself and silencing all opposition – that’s exactly what happened during the Bosnian War and during the accompanying genocide as well by a Yugoslavian government that had strict and severe “hate speech” laws, to name just one additional example.

Likewise, if Hitler had openly come out and said that he wanted to exterminate all Jews, he would have been widely condemned and he would never have gained any popularity. People like Hitler gain popularity by hiding their true motives and by making themselves appear sensible and reasonable to the public. This is what makes things like, for example, Canada’s law against “advocating genocide” so absurd – it assumes that the public consists merely of braindead, glassy-eyed automatons who mindlessly accept absolutely anything that they hear. The idea that someone can publicly say “let’s gas all the Jews” and gain widespread support for it is so patently absurd that it’s hard for anyone (in America, at least) to even entertain the vague possibility that such a thing could ever genuinely happen in real life. If a politician has genocidal intentions, then wouldn’t it be much better for all of us if that politician openly stated their genocidal intentions rather than keeping it a secret and thus possibly standing a chance at actually getting elected? In the words of Woodrow Wilson: “I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak, the secret is out and the world knows that he is a fool.” If anything, the most extreme and outrageous bigots actually harm the cause of bigotry and advance the cause of non-bigotry by making bigots seem completely insane and unreasonable. When bigots are required by law to hide their bigotry, not only are they forced to make themselves appear reasonable (which is much more appealing to the public and thus far more dangerous), but people also would not even know who the bigots are and thus would have no way of knowing which people to avoid. When bigots can speak out openly, however, people are forced to confront the realities of bigotry head-on and people can see just how ugly and how disgusting bigotry truly is, thus uniting people against it. Take, for example, the Westboro Baptist Church, a group whose disgusting anti-gay demonstrations at funerals have probably done more to unite people against homophobia and to advance the cause of gay rights than anyone else ever could.

Having a law against “advocating genocide” (which people have even tried to get the Canadian Prime Minister himself charged with) makes about as much sense as having a law against “advocating slavery” or “advocating nuclear war” – such things are already universally seen as being utterly reprehensible by almost everyone. At first glance, of course “advocating genocide” is disgusting, but having an entire specific law against it simply means that the government does not trust the people to decide for themselves that genocide is bad – and, if you can’t trust the people to reject genocide, then what can you trust them with? Freedom of speech is not just about the freedom to say things, but also about the freedom to hear things and to decide for oneself about things. Yet, to a government that treats its citizens like idiotic children with no agency, any reprehensible ideas must be outright banned from ever being discussed lest those mindless, moronic masses be driven into a Jew-gassing frenzy. And, rest assured, the governments of Europe do indeed see their citizens as idiotic little children – perhaps even more so than Canada’s government does. Genocides are always perpetrated either by the government, with the approval of the government, or after the government has collapsed. Since Europeans were dumb enough to follow the government during the Nazi era, they therefore need the government to protect themselves… from following the government. This is the level of logic at work here.

Laws regulating speech also play another notable role in Europe: attempting to make Europe’s seething racism somewhat less open and obvious to outsiders. After all, the governments of Europe have absolutely no problem passing laws that discriminate against Muslims, such as banning their religious garb or banning them from praying in the streets – yet they will not hesitate to imprison people for criticizing Islam or even for criticizing sharia law. Why the odd double-standard? It couldn’t possibly be because Europe prefers to pretend like its extreme and widespread racism doesn’t exist rather than confronting it head-on… could it? Silencing speech allows people to feel like they’re doing good and “fighting racism” without actually doing anything to address the underlying causes of racism. It’s a very European approach to dealing with problems: simply pretend that the problem doesn’t exist and just hope that it goes away. “Hate speech” laws have only made racism in Europe even worse, so, of course, Europe is now trying to make its “hate speech” laws even stricter. Because, after all, emotion and feelings are far more important than logic and reason. And, rest assured, there is not a single logical argument for government control of speech – all pro-censorship arguments are based entirely on petty appeals to emotion and logical fallacies.

Apparently, European society is so deeply “civilized” and “enlightened” that all it takes for a new genocide to occur is for a far-right politician to be allowed to speak out openly (and, in many countries, even “hateful” comments made in complete privacy can get you arrested). If a society needs strict censorship of speech to prevent itself from supporting Nazis, then there is clearly something very wrong with that society to begin with – something which no amount of censorship is ever going to correct. And, if democracy requires all sorts of plug-ins and add-ons to make it work – such as banning certain political parties – then it is not truly democracy at all. The “human rights” lobby’s main goal has always been the total eradication of democracy – they are the sort of dictators who see themselves as dictating “for the greater good” of the idiot masses who apparently just can’t stop themselves from committing genocides. The way that “human rights activists” see all humans – as evil, vicious savages who will eagerly commit genocides if someone even says something slightly politically incorrect – is, ironically, so profoundly anti-human that even someone as deeply misanthropic as I am finds it to be nothing less than outright absurd. “Human rights” indeed.

Take, for example, the “human rights” lobby’s reaction to David Icke, a kooky conspiracy theorist known for his absurd belief that shape-shifting lizard people run the world (yes, really). The “human rights” lobby has repeatedly attempted to block him from speaking. In the words of prominent Canadian “human rights” lawyer and censorship fanatic Richard Warman: “He has taken all the conspiracy theories that ever existed and melded them together to create an even greater conspiracy of his own. His writings may be the work of a madman, or of a genuine racist. Either way they are very dangerous. There is an unpleasant anti-Semitic undertone in his work that must be brought to public attention. If he’s unstable then so are his followers, who hang on his every word. What benefit can there be in allowing him to speak?” To the ultra-elitist, ultra-Orwellian “human rights” lobby – a lobby very heavily influenced by Soviet ideology – humans need absolutely everything that they see and hear to be strictly regulated by the state because humans are simply not capable of deciding anything for themselves. In essence, the principle goal of the “human rights” lobby is to make the entire world into something along the lines of North Korea.

Censorship is, to quote the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “like poison gas: a powerful weapon that can harm you when the wind shifts.” For a good recent example, Japanese politicians have proposed using new “hate speech” laws in Japan – which the United Nations and “human rights activists” and other useful idiots have repeatedly demanded (even though much of the “hate speech” in Japan could simply be prosecuted as harassment and/or intimidation) – in order to silence anti-government and anti-nuclear protests since, in the words of Japanese politician Sanae Takaichi, lawmakers need to work “without any fear of criticism” (laws against “hate speech” in Japan could, ironically, also be used to shut down the very same pro-North Korean schools that Japanese racists want to be closed, thus giving the racists exactly what they want). Orwellian newspeak and doublethink are staples of the “human rights” lobby, as exemplified by “human rights advocate” Yoshifu Arita’s statement: “I would venture to say that we need to restrict hate speech in order to protect freedom of speech.” Of course, many of the very same people who are demanding that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party take steps to outlaw “hate speech” are also outraged at his stated intentions to change the Japanese Constitution and limit freedom of speech by making certain vaguely-defined kinds of speech “contrary to public order” and consider this to be the sign of a coming police state – even though “hate speech” has been used as a justification for Abe’s plans. The level of mental gymnastics from pro-censorship advocates truly is a sight to behold.

Likewise, Thailand (a country which also supposedly guarantees freedom of speech through its constitution) now justifies censorship by labeling all criticism of its government as “hate speech”. There is absolutely no objective criteria for determining what is “hate speech” and, if you’re convinced that society and the government are fundamentally racist, then the last thing that you want to do is to give those very same “racists” the power to silence certain speech since that power will be used to silence people like you and/or people that you support. When you give the government the power to silence speech that it deems worthy of being silenced, you are putting an incredible amount of blind faith in the very same government that, more than likely, you despise (and, even if you don’t despise the current government, there will undoubtedly be a government in the future that you despise, and that government will have the very same subjective censorship powers). It is very common for “human rights activists” to argue that “hate speech” is not merely speech, but a form of violence. This cheapens actual violence and harms victims of actual violence in much the same way that third-wave feminists labeling assorted things “rape” trivializes actual rape and harms actual rape victims.

Nazis and fascists may very well take over Europe – and, when they do, they will undoubtedly use those very same “hate speech” laws to silence anti-Nazi and anti-fascist speech (the right wing in Europe has been quite open about wanting to ban Islam, for instance), just as countries all over the world silence any opposition to their governments by labeling said opposition as “hate speech” and/or “incitement”, whether it’s directed at gay activists in Russia or at pro-Palestinian activists in Israel. After all, “hate speech” laws were pushed heavily by the Soviet Union, which was the driving force behind the inclusion of “hate speech” restrictions in United Nations “international laws” such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination – with the motive of the Soviet Union, of course, being to limit freedom of expression to the strongest extent possible (at one point, the West was very much opposed to such restrictions on speech, but the Soviets won in the end and now the West strongly supports “hate speech” laws). And, where the Soviet Union once succeeded in getting “hate speech” laws passed internationally, the Islamic world is now succeeding in getting all criticism of religion outlawed internationally – and, once again, they’re achieving this through the putrid, totalitarian, un-democratic abomination that is the United Nations while “human rights activists” and the international community pressure the US to outlaw criticism of religion as well. Showing the truly dangerous and toxic nature of the UN, dictatorships around the world use it to pass “international laws” against various kinds of speech – whether it’s “hate speech” or “defamation of religion” – and these “international laws” eventually make their way into real laws (as mandated by the UN) around the world, becoming universally accepted over time.

Quite frankly, the future of Europe doesn’t look too bright, just like the future of Israel and China and India and the human race in general. But know this, Europeans: your authoritarian ways will be your ultimate downfall, even when you’re using authoritarianism in a highly ironic attempt to stop the spread of authoritarianism. You have given the world socialism and communism and fascism and just about every single other wretched, authoritarian ideology in existence – and you are naturally drawn to such ideologies, so it is absolutely no surprise that you are gravitating back towards fascism.

Like Israel, you are a society that is currently in your last days and you are becoming more and more extreme in a desperate bid to survive. You are repeating the exact same mistakes that you made prior to World War II, right down to your ceaseless attempts to censor “dangerous” ideologies. When your continent is once again taken over by fascists (and/or Russia and/or Islam), I will unfortunately not be the least bit surprised. I just hope that the US will not find itself afflicted by your sick, twisted brand of authoritarianism. The United States is the last remaining vestige of freedom of speech in the world, as it is the last remaining country in the world without any laws against “hate speech” or anything comparable. If the day ever comes that the United States decides to follow the rest of the world and succumb to government suppression of speech, then the Soviets – and the Nazis – will have truly won.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between the political right and the political left is that right-wingers hate other cultures, while left-wingers hate their own culture. Right-wing politics is all about hatred for others; left-wing politics is all about self-hatred. Since both are, at the end of the day, all about hate and fear, they have a lot more similarities than differences. And, since both tend to focus heavily on identity politics nowadays, both are very prone to self-cannibalization and infighting.

As left-wing and right-wing politics grow more extreme – on both sides – the differences between them grow even more minimal. I’ve long stated that there is almost no difference between the far-left and the far-right. If anything, the ideology of “social justice” is very similar to the ideology of Nazism. Yes, I am quite blatantly invoking Godwin’s law here – and yes, I am well aware that Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) have never killed 12 million people or started any wars (although I’m sure they would love to if given the chance) – but bear with me on this. Nazis and SJWs both have a designated “oppressor group” that controls and dominates everything. For Nazis, it was the Jews; for SJWs, it’s whites/males/”cishets”/patriarchy. Both have an “oppressed group” that suffers horribly at the hands of this designated “oppressor group” or “privileged group”. For Nazis, it was white Europeans; for SJWs, it’s women, “People of Color” (“PoC”), gays, transsexuals, and other designated victim groups. Both subsist on feelings of hatred, inadequacy, fear, and a desire to be superior. Both have extreme paranoid persecution complexes and are eager to find (and invent) conspiracies everywhere. And, most of all, both firmly believe that all dissent and questioning of their ideologies must be immediately quashed with an iron fist.

If you browse online white supremacist and neo-Nazi circles, you will often find incessant infighting between members – usually over the subject of identity politics. Should neo-Nazis be Christian? Should they be pagan? Should they be non-religious? Do Christians worship a “dead kike on a stick”, as /pol/ would so eloquently put it? Is Odinism the one, true white European religion? Is atheism a form of degeneracy pushed onto white Christian nations by the evil, conniving Jews? This is just one example of the many, many internal conflicts which exist in neo-Nazi circles, and any long discussion on Stormfront or any other white supremacist site usually devolves into a flame war in which board members repeatedly accuse each other of being secret Jewish infiltrators and/or “degenerates”.

Likewise, in social justice circles, petty identity politic nitpicking inevitably leads to self-cannibalization. SJWs – the vast majority of whom are upper-middle-class white hipsters – claim to speak on behalf of a wide range of “oppressed” and “marginalized” groups. But what happens when different “marginalized groups” clash among each other? That question arose in a big way recently with the release of a viral video purporting to show a woman walking through New York City and being “catcalled” by various men. The horrifying abuse that the woman in the video endures truly is disturbing. Not only is she told “hello” numerous times and asked “how are you doing?”, but some particularly fiendish men even tell her to “have a good day”. Deeply shocking and profoundly terrifying stuff indeed.

Now, one would expect SJWs to leap at the opportunity to jump on their soapbox and use this video as an opportunity to preach about “rape culture” and the “street harassment” that women endure. And, initially, that is exactly what a few of them did. But hold on: where do white women rank in the Oppression Olympics? As it turns out, the woman in the video is white and most of the “catcallers” are black and Latino men. Not only that, but they’re primarily lower-class too. So, here we have an upper-class white woman being catcalled by lower-class “PoC”. In the world of SJWs, there is a hierarchy of oppressed groups. Whereas a neo-Nazi would argue that they are superior to you because of the groups that they belong to, an SJW would argue that they are inferior to you because of the groups that they belong to – which, in their topsy-turvy world, makes them superior. Some groups are more oppressed than others. A woman being catcalled would typically be a victim in SJW circles, but this woman ranks below the catcallers in the Oppression Olympics, so, using SJW logic, the catcallers here are the actual victims who are being shamelessly exploited by a privileged white woman trying to force white Western cultural norms upon them and attacking their unique culture.

Wait, what? Catcalling is a part of black and Latino culture? Isn’t that a bit… well, racist? Before answering this question, keep in mind that SJWs are almost entirely white. And, whereas right-wingers see minorities as enemies, leftists see minorities as pets. The modern identity politics-driven leftist views minorities the same way that modern third-wave feminists view women: as nothing more than poor, helpless, pitiful little children who have absolutely no agency whatsoever and are completely incapable of doing anything for themselves. To claim that catcalling is an intrinsic part of black and/or Latino “culture” is utterly clueless and extremely condescending to anyone who actually knows anything about black and/or Latino culture. But, to a latte-sipping white leftist who lives in an all-white gated community and uses their iMac made in third-world sweatshops to defend the “poor, downtrodden minorities” on Tumblr and Twitter, anything that any minorities do is part of their “culture” and all cultures are equal except for Western culture, which is uniquely evil and is responsible for everything bad in the world. The “social justice” ideology is the new “white man’s burden”. Only now, rather than “saving” other races from their “savage” ways, we must “save” them from our “racist” whiteness and we must treat them like pets. It’s all extremely condescending and patronizing. And, thus, we see horseshoe theory in action. Where the right-wingers of the past saw non-whites as inferior savages who need the white man to survive, so, too, do the leftists of today.

Unsurprisingly, white supremacists and neo-Nazis have also jumped at the chance to use this video to further their agenda. The video has been plastered all over white supremacist sites as an example of “nigger culture” and “feral niggers harassing a white woman”. These people, of course, are playing right into the hands of the SJWs that I described above, as this is exactly the reaction that they want the video to create so as to validate their narrative that the video was created by evil white men in order to fuel hatred of “PoC”.

Ultimately, what unites both neo-Nazis and SJWs – and what this video has fueled in people of all sides – is what unites all of humanity: hate. Whether it’s hatred for yourself or hatred for others – or perhaps even both – hatred is what fuels the right and the left, and it’s what fuels the human race. At the end of the day, hate is what humans of all races, creeds, religions, and nationalities are all about. Unfortunately, all humans – whether they’ll admit it or not – are vicious, hateful, and fearful creatures by nature, even when their hatred is disguised as some form of love or as some form of “social justice”. So, by all means, hate all you want, but don’t pretend that your hate is for social justice or equality, and don’t pretend that you are any different than the fascists and the Nazis that you claim to be diametrically opposed to. You are, more or less, exactly the same.